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Youth quotes

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“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because...” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“Only the dead stay 17 for ever.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“They say an old man is twice a child.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “This Side of Paradise” - 1920

“Some people turn sad awfully young . . . No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know,...” Ray Bradbury, “Dandelion Wine” - 1957

“I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.” Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom” - 1995

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“I may die young . . . But at least I'll die smart.” John Green, “Looking for Alaska” - 2005

“Young men are fitter to invent, than to judge; fitter for execution, than for counsel; and fitter for new projects, than for settled business.” Francis Bacon, “The Essays of Francis Bacon” - 1597

“The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“I know not why I love this youth, and I have heard you say love's reason's without reason.” William Shakespeare, “Cymbeline” - 1623

“How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present?” Confucius, “Analects”

“It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.” Louisa May Alcott, “Little Women” - 1868

“A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.” Gustave Flaubert, “Madame Bovary” - 1856

“For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 1” - 1597

“I realized that I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.” Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” - 1969

“I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics.” George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman” - 1903

“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery—love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me.” Tennessee Williams, “A Streetcar Named Desire” - 1947

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“Or what is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.” William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing” - 1600

“The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity's revolt to wantonness.” William Shakespeare, “Love's Labour's Lost” - 1598

“At your age we have faith in life; it is the privilege of youth to believe and hope, but old men see death more clearly.” Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo” - 1845

“let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.” William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew” - 1623

“It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to...” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.” Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451” - 1953

“And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.” William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” - 1623

“Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince” - 1943

“Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“The years 19 and 20 are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“There was great difference in persons; and discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without it.” Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” - 1791

“Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything . . . and when they grow older they know it.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable.” Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin” - 2000

“Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tales of the Jazz Age” - 1922

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” Jane Austen, “Persuasion” - 1816

“Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.” Honoré de Balzac, “Father Goriot” - 1835

“I never knew so young a body with so old a head.” William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice” - 1600

“By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going...” Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is;” William Shakespeare, “Shakespeare's Sonnets” - 1609

Related topics

love age death experience life ignorance hope knowledge beauty desire man woman loneliness judgement travel talent idealism timidity madness men

Related authors

William Shakespeare (14)
Oscar Wilde (4)
Haruki Murakami (4)
Charlotte Brontë (3)
Jane Austen (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Neil Gaiman (2)
Ray Bradbury (2)
George Bernard Shaw (1)
James Joyce (1)
Mark Twain (1)
John Green (1)
George Eliot (1)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
Ayn Rand (1)
Victor Hugo (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
Theodore Roosevelt (1)

Related sources

The Picture of Dorian Gray (4)
Much Ado About Nothing (3)
Jane Eyre (3)
Norwegian Wood (2)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
Hamlet (1)
Shakespeare's Sonnets (1)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1)
The Merchant of Venice (1)
Richard III (1)
Sense and Sensibility (1)
Man and Superman (1)
This Side of Paradise (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
Cymbeline (1)
Love's Labour's Lost (1)
Henry IV, Part 2 (1)
Henry IV, Part 1 (1)
The Taming of the Shrew (1)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1)