Quotes about Youth

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The deduction is plain --adults and wise persons _never_ speak it.

Say, do we kill the women too? Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home anymore.

White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking

There was a tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither actually old or absolutely young.

It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-book boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good.

Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that vise he was borne across the house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.

Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The deduction is plain --adults and wise persons _never_ speak it.

Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.

Now, Jack, is there anything you would like? The youth pondered for a moment. I'd like a shillin', said he. Nothing you would like better? I'd like two shillin' better, the prodigy answered after some thought.

I have wrought my simple plan If I give one hour of joy To the boy who's half a man, Or the man who's half a boy.

I do not think that life has any joy to offer so complete, so soul-filling as that which comes upon the imaginative lad, whose spare time is limited, but who is able to snuggle down into a corner with his book, knowing that the next hour is all his own. And how vivid and fresh it all is!

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.