Quotes about youth
Being young, impatient and certain. Quotes about youth from writers looking back at it, and a few still in it.
The library has 397 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about youth
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Men who have not observed proper discipline, and have not gained treasure in their youth, perish like old herons in a lake without fish.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 155 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
William Shakespeare The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act i. Sc. 1 -
Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man, Epistle II -
Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
William Shakespeare Cymbeline, Act iv. Sc. 2 -
This morning, like the spirit of a youth That means to be of note, begins betimes.
William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 4 -
Youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears, Than settled age his sables and his weeds, Importing health and graveness.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, iv. 7 -
Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto ii. Stanza 23 -
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
John Milton Paradise Regained -
The child is father of the man.
William Wordsworth My heart leaps up when I behold -
Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.
William Wordsworth To a Butterfly. I’ve watched you now a full half-hour -
Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Children -
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!
William Wordsworth The Prelude, Book xi -
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Bible (World English Bible) Proverbs, 22:6 -
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; Old age is slow in both.
Joseph Addison Canto, Act ii -
A man well on in years was reproved for still troubling himself about young women. ‘It is the only means,’ he replied, ‘of regaining one’s youth; and that is something every one wishes to do.’
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 295 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody is hindering him.
Abraham Lincoln January 5 -
I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back.
Abraham Lincoln February 13 -
The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 588 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens -
Of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose their humility. If you maintain a reserve towards them, they are discontented.
Confucius Analects, XVII.25 · translated by James Legge -
Just at the age ’twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth.
Walter Scott Marmion, Introduction to Canto ii -
An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.
Napoleon -
The soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. The body is born young, and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Admiration spoils all from infancy. Ah! How well said! Ah! How well done! How well-behaved he is! etc.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 151 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
When we are too young, we do not judge well; so, also, when we are too old.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 381 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount to but this, that more might have been done, or sooner.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Wisdom sends us to childhood. Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 271 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
As I approve of a youth, that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man, that has something of the youth.
Cicero -
In my childhood I demurred to the description of a certain young lady as “the pretty Miss So and So.” My aunt rebuked me by saying “Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.”
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Representative Men -
Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life -
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and Solitude -
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
George Chapman All Fools, Act v. Sc. 1 -
Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to life. The old are in life’s lumber-room. But youth is the lord of life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile—like most kings.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves For a bright manhood, there is no such word as “fail.”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton Richelieu, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
A young citizen had put out his eye, and been handed over to him by the people to be punished at his own discretion.
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. LXXXVIII · translated by Hastings Crossley -
If in youth the universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven revealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself as in the young maiden.
Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus -
In the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of self-help.
Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus -
Childhood has no forebodings; but then it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
George Eliot -
The young men must not be permitted to drift away.
Abraham Lincoln January 18 -
Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 372 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 271 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
The heat of youth is not more opposed to safety than the coldness of age.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 341 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto xv. Stanza 43 -
Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv. Stanza 120 -
Youth! There is nothing like it. It is absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are persons much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun.
Jean Paul -
I do not think its value can be exaggerated, because it gives you the means of training the young in attention and accuracy, which are the two things in which all mankind are more deficient than in any other mental quality whatever.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. XCIV -
Children think not of what is past, nor what is to come, but enjoy the present time, which few of us do.
Jean de La Bruyère -
Yesterday: the infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.
Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary -
Methinks Caesar was too old to set about amusing himself with conquering the world. Such sport was good for Augustus or Alexander. They were still young men, and thus difficult to restrain. But Caesar should have been more mature.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 132 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
You are no longer a youth, but already a full-grown man.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. L · translated by George Long -
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth—two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce The Devil’s Dictionary -
Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.
Lord Byron Beppo, Stanza 39 -
To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequer’d shade.
John Milton L’Allegro, Line 95 -
Men are but children of a larger growth.
John Dryden All for Love, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism