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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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

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

“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

“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.” William Shakespeare, “Richard III” - 1597

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

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

“Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.” William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” - 1597

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“In the same way I have always regarded boxing as a first-class sport to encourage in the Young Men's Christian Association.” Theodore Roosevelt, “Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography” - 1913

“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

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

“Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 2” - 1600

“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

“In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” - 1858

“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

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“As the idealism of our youth has served world peace, so can it serve the domestic tranquility.” John F. Kennedy, “State of the Union Address” - 14 January 1963

“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

“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

“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

“When you’re young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you’re laughing again.” Marilyn Monroe, “My Story” - 1974

“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

“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”

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

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

“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

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

“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

“What a weary time those years were—to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

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

“If you’re young and talented, it’s like you have wings.” Haruki Murakami, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” - 2007

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

“there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.” Jane Austen, “Sense and Sensibility” - 1811

“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

“It's a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes, and you may lay to that.” Robert Louis Stevenson, “Treasure Island” - 1883

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

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)
W. Somerset Maugham (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)

Related sources

The Picture of Dorian Gray (4)
Much Ado About Nothing (3)
Jane Eyre (3)
Of Human Bondage (2)
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)