quotations about youth
In this conflict between youth and its elders, youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established--Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the elders, it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to the institutions, customs, and ideas, and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem.
RANDOLPH BOURNE
"Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, April 1912
A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?
CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom of Confucius
Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
JOHN DENHAM
Of Prudence
Youth without beauty is half a prize.
G. WHITE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Youth is often a scoffer at destiny.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
Youth has needs, I know,
And headlong yearnings like the mountain streams
That rush adown the nearest path they find
To meet the sounding river.
ANNA KATHERINE GREEN
"Womanhood"
When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Dance, Dance, Dance
The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.
JANE ADDAMS
The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House
Since time immemorial, youth has set the universal standard of physical beauty, and the reason is simply that a shapely firm young face and body are more attractive sexually and aesthetically than bulges, sags and wrinkles.
HUGH HEFNER
Playboy, Jan. 1974
Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.
ROB SHEFFIELD
Love is a Mix Tape
If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings
HARUKI MURAKAMI
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A man that is young in years, may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Youth And Age", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment but in purchase of its worth,
And what it's worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
When beautiful youth is gone, not much of life remains.
G. ULTHORN
attributed, Day's Collacon
We are young only once, after that we need some other excuse.
ANONYMOUS
Try to hold on to youth and it mocks you while it sprints away.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune