Archive

Quotes

The 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, 1968

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.

—Bessie Smith, 1926

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children. 

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

—Donald Barthelme, 1964

No one’s serious at seventeen.

—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870

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 BC

The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage. 

—Plato, c. 348 BC

Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

I 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, 1813

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

—Molière, 1673