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 BCQuotes
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, 1968I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.
—Bessie Smith, 1926Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
—Herbert Hoover, 1936The 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, 1964Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860No 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. 1940There 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, 1688Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.
—Jean Cocteau, 1947No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706