quotations about youth
Youth is an emblem of heaven; there alone its bloom is eternal.
F. VALENTYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The magnet does not more surely and powerfully attract the needle, than youth by some electric sympathy of soul is attracted by youth.
ROBERT SHELTON MACKENZIE
Titian: A Romance of Venice
My youth is the foundation of me.
KHALID
"American Teen"
Youth is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh and fair by wearing sparingly; youth, while we have it, we must wear daily, and it will fast wear away.
JOHN FOSTER
John Foster: Life and Thoughts
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
ALPHAVILLE
"Forever Young"
A youth, like a tree, needs pruning.
WIGGINS
attributed, Day's Collacon
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Fortune's Child", Lapham's Quarterly: Youth
Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
Ethel Churchill: or, The Two Brides
Youth isn't wasted on, or reserved for, the young.
JULIAN KIMBLE
"At Trillectro, youth is not wasted", Washington Post, August 28, 2016
Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Heh? Eh? Our youth is dead.
From the minute we discover it with eyes closed
Advancing into mountain light.
Ouch.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Our Youth Is Dead", The Tennis Court Oath: A Book of Poems
Time ever mocks all youthful hopes;
He laughs at ever plan youth makes;
He buries fame and honor deep
In grave of hope--too late youth wakes.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Time's Ravages"
In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;
But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour, come,
And age, and death's inexorable doom.
VIRGIL
Georgics
Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,
Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
It is the way of youth that each fresh piece of knowledge of life should go to its head, and that once uplifted by an emotion it can never have enough of it.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
speech at University of Cape Town, South Africa, Jun. 6, 1966
There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore