#youth

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. ↗

— Mary Roberts Rinehart

#die #fight #hate #i #into

We need affordable space travel to inspire our youth, to let them know that they can experience their dreams, can set significant goals and be in a position to lead all of us to future progress in exploration, discovery and fun. Thanks to the X Prize for the inspiration. ↗

— Burt Rutan

#discovery #dreams #experience #exploration #fun

Seven Ages: first puking and mewling Then very pissed-off with your schooling Then fucks, and then fights Next judging chaps' rights Then sitting in slippers: then drooling. ↗

— Robert Conquest

#limerick #middle-age #old-age #seven-ages-of-man #william-shakespeare

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#poetry #talent #youth #age

...one of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth. ↗

— Machado de Assis

#old-age #youth #age

In my youth I loved climbing and scrambling up rocks and mountains: now I seldom intrude on the dweller of a second story, and my greatest enemy or friend may avoid me altogether on the third; so humbled is the aspiring spirit of my youth. ↗

— Edward John Trelawny

#youth-is-temporary #age

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man's spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man's skin. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#youth #age

Behold yon rough and flinty road Where youth, now youth no more, Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loaves He cast away of yore. ↗

— Emma Ghent Curtis

#experience #poem #poetry #poets #youth

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...) ↗

— Philip Larkin

#love #poetry #youth #age

He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#leadership #youth #age