#youth

There is no man...however wise, who has not at some period in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man... ↗

— Marcel Proust

#youth #life

The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it. ↗

— Evelyn Waugh

#life #youth #life

Why are we asked to make the most important decisions of our lives when we are so young, and so prone to mistakes? ↗

— Samuel Park

#life #youth #life

Your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers’, but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly. ↗

— James Fenimore Cooper

#humility #youth #education

Perhaps the only reason they survived, Stencil reasoned, was that they were not alone. God knew how many more there were with a hothouse sense of time, no knowledge of life, and at the mercy of Fortune. ↗

— Thomas Pynchon

#youthfulness #life

Do not be too sure, young fellows, That you are better than your ancestors. ↗

— William Kean Seymour

#experience #wisdom #youth #age

The only thing a person of my age can do is fall in love secretly, silently, like I had done with Mariana. Fall in love knowing that all is lost and there is no hope. ↗

— José Emilio Pacheco

#youth #age

She was beautiful, but her youth, the very awkwardness of her age, prevented her from flaunting it. ↗

— Richard J. O'Brien

#beautiful #beauty #teen #youth #age

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality. ↗

— Gary Shteyngart

#immortality #mediocrities #love

She is too absorbed in the difficulties of being seventeen to want to hear the confusions of forty-four. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#youth #age