Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881Quotes
Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 200 BCThe young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain, 1876Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
—Herbert Hoover, 1936A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.
—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.
—Theognis, c. 550 BC