Youth Quotes

“He doesn't know it yet, but the infinity of childhood is brief.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day – or as he sleeps – simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace.
I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere – us – I know I have a chance.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Pardon all runners,
All speechless, alien winds,
All mad waters.

Pardon their impulses,
Their wild attitudes,
Their young flights, their reticence.

When a message has no clothes on
How can it be spoken.”
― Thomas Merton

“God help us for we knew the worst too young.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“I once had a mind of quicksand,
That dragged ideas into its depths,
Inhaling specks of sunlight,
Every time I drew a breath,
But the world thought me a hazard,
When every word I spoke, I meant,
So around me they put caution tape,
And filled me with cement.”
― Erin Hanson

“Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“We all have our youthful follies, embarassing to recall -- but people somehow find it hard to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a financial success.”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.”
― John Cage, M: Writings '67–'72

“The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.”
― Oscar Wilde in The Picture Of Dorian Gray

“The only thing a person of my age can do is fall in love secretly, silently, like
I had done with Mariana. Fall in love knowing that all is lost and there is no hope.”
― José Emilio Pacheco, Battles in the Desert & Other Stories

“Sometimes, Tiffany thought, I am so fed up with being young.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

“Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth...”
― Sinclair Lewis

“It was impossible to understand how brief it is. It seemed like youth would last so long; it would last forever. But it's just a blink.”
― Chris Pavone, The Expats

“Be game--take a chance--don't hide behind veils and veils of discretion... Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy--or quit. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing--not to settle and accept.”
― Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

“Nothing in childhood is ever wasted.”
― Bruce Dickinson, What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography

“At twenty-four she imagined with dread that she was growing old.”
― Jean Rhys

“She could afford anything, she could give anything, but she could not share a moment of her life with anybody. She
was a beautiful and a glamorous diamond with an astronomical price tag, but to a crude reality — she was still a stone, a living stone. Nothing else but a stone in an aesthetic sense.”
― Ravindra Shukla, A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life

“Today is not just another ordinary day. It is an opportunity to do, or say, something that just might inspire someone to greater becoming...especially a wayward youth.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one's senses are so alert, one's sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one's memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Youth lasts much longer than young people think.”
― Marie Joséphine de Suin

“Boys with their first beards can be a thorough pain in the neck.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“At that time in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway. Many of us were.

Scientists said it was ending now, philosophers said it had always been ending.

Historians said there’d been dark ages before. It all came out in the wash, because eventually, if you were patient, enlightenment arrived and then a wide array of Apple devices.

Politicians claimed everything would be fine. Adjustments were being made. Much as our human ingenuity had got us into this fine mess, so would it neatly get us out. Maybe more cars would switch to electric.

That was how we could tell it was serious. Because they were obviously lying.”
― Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible

“A wealth of experience and wisdom doesn't have to be a dead giveaway to your increasing years. The spin you put on it is what will keep you young. Don't let it make you bitter. Learn from it, and let it make you better.”
― Jayleigh Cape

“You," she said. She grabbed my wrist and pressed two fingers onto me as if taking my pulse and I stopped breathing. "I know you. I remember you from my youth. You contain multitudes. There is a crush of experience coursing by you. And you want to take every experience on the pulse.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“A brief life burns brightly.”
― Stephen Baxter, Exultant

“Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The Coming of Wisdom with Time

Though leaves are many, the root is one,
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.”
― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.

At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I know that age, it's a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won't make you fear the future. A pity we can't change over.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Dancing is the real plastic surgery," Uma loved to say. "It's what keeps you young.”
― Sonali Dev, The Bollywood Bride