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Quotes

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.

—Groucho Marx, 1959

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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

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

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

—Herbert Hoover, 1936

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 young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind.

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747

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

—Plato, c. 348 BC

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

—Bessie Smith, 1926

A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.

—Jane Austen, 1816
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