Youth

"The insect-youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon!"

"Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint, Each lost day has its patron saint!"

"There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals."

"Ah, youth! forever dear, forever kind."

"Youth! youth! how buoyant are thy hopes! they turn, Like marigolds, toward the sunny side."

"All the world's a mass of folly, Youth is gay, age melancholy: Youth is spending, age is thrifty, Mad at twenty, cold at fifty; Man is nought but folly's slave, From the cradle to the grave."

"Towering in confidence of twenty-one."

"When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey, for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day."

"Our youth began with tears and sighs, With seeking what we could not find; We sought and knew not what we sought; We marvel, now we look behind: Life's more amusing than we thought."

"Flos juvenum (Flos juventutis)."

"Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!"

"How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!"

"In its sublime audacity of faith, "Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith, And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud!"

"Youth, that pursuest with such eager pace Thy even way, Thou pantest on to win a mournful race: Then stay! oh, stay! Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain; Loiter,—enjoy: Once past, Thou never wilt come back again, A second Boy."

"'Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them."

"The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken."

"Dissimiles hic vir, et ille puer."

"The atrocious crime of being a young man."

"When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one."

"De jeune hermite, vieil diable."

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together; Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame. Age, I do abhor thee; youth I do adore thee."

"Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime: So thou through windows of thine age shall see, Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time."

"Hail, blooming Youth! May all your virtues with your years improve, Till in consummate worth you shine the pride Of these our days, and succeeding times A bright example."

"Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong."

"For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself."

"Youth is wholly experimental."

"Youth should be a savings-bank."

"What unjust judges fathers are, when in regard to us they hold That even in our boyish days we ought in conduct to be old, Nor taste at all the very things that youth and only youth requires; They rule us by their present wants not by their past long-lost desires."

"The next, keep under Sir Hobbard de Hoy: The next, a man, no longer a boy."

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!"

"A youth to whom was given So much of earth, so much of heaven."

"The greatest part of mankind employ their first years to make their last miserable."

"Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Use it as the spring-time which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow all provisions for a long and happy life."

"Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you might as well quarrel with the child's rattle, and advance him directly to the boy's top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the manly confidence of riper age."

"A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour! A youth thoughtless! when his every act is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now — though indeed there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless — his death-bed. No thinking should be ever left to be done there."

"Oh thou corrupter of youth! I would not take thy death, for all the pleasures of thy guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt draw near to the shadow of death. To the Christian these shades are the golden haze which heaven's light makes, when it meets the earth and mingles with its shadows. But to thee, these shall be shadows full of phantom-shapes. Images of terror in the Future shall dimly rise and beckon: — the ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out their skinny hands to push thee forward! Thou shalt not die unattended! Despair shall mock thee. Agony shall tender to thy parched lips her fiery cup. Remorse shall feel for thy heart and rend it open. Good men shall breathe freer at thy death, and utter thanksgiving when thou art gone."

"When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over."

"I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg."

"Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation."

"The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; "they will both fall into the ditch"."

"Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are…. Don't take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations."

"We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union. We are told that we ought not to treat it seriously. The Times talked of "the children's hour". I disagree. It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom. One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy, and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England. Let them be assured that it is not the last word. But before they blame, as blame they should, these callow ill-tutored youths, they must be sure that they have not been set a bad example by people much older and much higher up."

"That we may live to see England once more possess a free Monarchy and a privileged and prosperous People, is my Prayer; that these great consequences can only be brought about by the energy and devotion of our Youth is my persuasion. We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity."

"Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing."

"Thou know'st the o'er-eager vehemence of youth, How quick in temper, and in judgement weak."

"Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again."

"It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge."

"Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement of danger. It 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 love of ease."

"Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacity—that you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives…. I believe one of America's most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America. My generation has invested all that it has, not only its love but its hope and faith, in yours."

"The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life."