The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884 - 1980)

The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.

Anne Rice (1941 - ), "Tale of the Body Thief"

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication¹, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), 'Nicomachean Ethics²'

Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy³, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.

Benjamin Haydon

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

Coco Chanel (1883 - 1971)

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature⁴.

Dave Barry (1947 - )

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Diogenes Laertius

What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability⁵, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873)

Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse⁶, and even your kids. Even if it's a bit edgy⁷, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means that you will do something new, meet someone new and make a difference.

Eric Schmidt

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966)

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)

The surest way to corrupt⁸ a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem⁹ those who think alike than those who think differently.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), The Dawn, Sec. 297

Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.

Friedrich von Schiller (1759 - 1805)

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims¹⁰ for Revolutionists"

If youth only knew: if age only could.

Henri Estienne (1470 - 1520)

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

Herbert Henry Asquith (1852 - 1928)

Praise youth and it will prosper¹¹.

Irish Proverb

Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.

J. K. Rowling, Harry¹² Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2005

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix¹³, 2003

I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

James M. Barrie (1860 - 1937)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

Youth isn't always all it's touted¹⁴ to be.

Lawana Blackwell, The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark, 1999

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865 - 1946)

In youth we learn; in age we understand.

Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

There's nothing that keeps its youth,

So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894), The Deacon's Masterpiece, 1858

I am not young enough to know everything.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Boyhood, like measles¹⁵, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

P. G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975), Uneasy Money