Of young men die many,
Of old men escape not any. [ Proverb ]
Young cocks love no coops. [ Proverb ]
To be young was very heaven! [ Wordsworth ]
A young saint, an old devil. [ Proverb ]
Go West, young man! Go West. [ John L. B. Soule ]
A young whore, an old saint. [ Proverb ]
A young man ought to be modest. [ Plaut ]
Curses are like young chickens,
And still come home to roost! [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
An old courtier, a young beggar. [ Proverb ]
Young men may die, old men must. [ Proverb ]
Old men feel young men's knocks. [ Proverb ]
It is so beautiful to die young! [ Andre Chenier ]
A young prodigal, an old mumper. [ Proverb ]
Young roses kindled into thought. [ Moore ]
Though I am young, I scorn to flit
On the wings of borrowed wit [ George Wither ]
Young widows still bide their time. [ H. W. Shaw ]
A young serving-man, an old beggar. [ Proverb ]
Pension never enriched a young man. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Everything is pretty that is young. [ Richardson ]
Young fellows will be young fellows. [ Bickerstaff ]
The young may die, but the old must! [ Longfellow ]
It becomes a young man to be modest. [ Plaut ]
We must be young to do great things. [ Goethe ]
Memory is what makes us young or old. [ Alfred de Musset ]
It is not good to be happy too young. [ Proverb ]
An old physician, and a young lawyer. [ Proverb ]
If the young knew - if the old could! [ Proverb ]
A young man idle is an old man needy. [ Proverb ]
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old. [ Longfellow ]
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Too young for woe, though not for tears. [ Washington Irving ]
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert. [ Byron ]
No young man believes he shall ever die. [ John Hazlitt ]
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Sc.1 ]
A young trooper should have an old horse. [ Proverb ]
The atrocious crime of being a young man. [ William Pitt ]
The devil was handsome when he was young. [ French Proverb ]
A globe of dew
Filling, in the morning new.
Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world;
Constellated suns unshaken,
Orbits measureless are furled
In that frail and fading sphere.
With ten millions gathered there
To tremble, gleam and disappear. [ Shelley ]
The chambers in the house of dreams
Are fed with so divine an air.
That Time's hoar wings grow young therein.
And they who walk there are most fair. [ Francis Thomson ]
As the old cock crows, so crows the young. [ Proverb ]
Young is the goose that will not eat oats. [ Proverb ]
Young men want to be faithful and are not,
old men want to be faithless and cannot. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Old fools are more foolish than young ones. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The owl thinks all her young ones beauties. [ Proverb ]
Quartane agues kill old men and cure young. [ Proverb ]
Young men are made wise, old men become so. [ Proverb ]
A young man married is a man that's marred. [ William Shakespeare ]
Old cats may lap as well as young children. [ Proverb ]
And the bright faces of my young companions
Are wrinkled like my own, or are no more. [ Longfellow ]
And both were young, and one was beautiful. [ Byron ]
The poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl. [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]
But can the noble mind forever brood,
The willing victim of a weary mood,
On heartless cares that squander life away,
And cloud young Genius brightening into day? [ Campbell ]
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought.
To teach the young idea how to shoot. [ James Thomson ]
As the old cock crows, the young one learns. [ Proverb ]
Young men soon give and soon forget affronts;
Old age is slow in both. [ Addison ]
To be young is to be as one of the immortals. [ Hazlitt ]
Young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Sc. 3 ]
A young man negligent, an old man necessitous. [ Proverb ]
Old men go to death; death comes to young men. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
When all sins grow old, covetousness is young. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Curiosity has lost more young girls than love. [ Mme. de Puisieux ]
Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint. [ Proverb ]
Whom the gods love die young, was said of yore. [ Byron ]
As necessary as an old sow among young children. [ Proverb ]
Grey hairs are wisdom - if you hold your tongue;
Speak - and they are but hairs, as in the young. [ Philo ]
So wise, so young, they say, do never live long. [ William Shakespeare ]
A young twig is easier twisted than an old tree. [ Proverb ]
The eastern hanging crescent climbeth higher;
See, purple on the azure softly steals.
And Morning, faintly touched with quivering fire
Leans on the frosty summits of the hills,
Like a young girl over her hoary sire. [ Roscoe ]
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]
We must always have old memories and young hopes. [ Arsene Houssaye ]
He that dies young has made a quick voyage of it. [ Proverb ]
A man may be young in years and yet old in hours. [ Proverb ]
Old camels carry young camels' skins to themarket. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Old gossips are usually young flirts gone to seed. [ J. L. Basford ]
Old men, when they scorn young, make much of death. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The bloom of young desire and purple light of love. [ Gay ]
The death of a young wolf doth never come too soon. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen,
The maiden herself will steal after it soon. [ Moore ]
Young men should be learners, when old men are actors. [ Proverb ]
Make the young one squeak and you'll catch the old one. [ Proverb ]
Young prodigal in a coach will be old beggar bare-foot. [ Proverb ]
Better shelter under an old hedge than a young furzbush. [ Proverb ]
Earthly paradise: the parents young, the children small. [ Victor Hugo ]
It is better for a young man to blush than to turn pale. [ Cato ]
Homeliness is the best guardian of a young girl's virtue. [ Mme. de Genlis ]
The young disease, that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength. [ Pope ]
To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair. [ George Eliot ]
To be famous when you are young is the fortune of the gods. [ Beaconsfield ]
Old men have one foot in the grave, and many young men too. [ Proverb ]
We are ever young enough to sin, never old enough to repent. [ Proverb ]
To woo is a pleasure in a young man, but a frenzy in an old. [ Proverb ]
There may be such things as old fools and young counsellors. [ Proverb ]
Grieve not that I die young.
Is it not well to pass away ere life has lost its brightness? [ Lady Flora Hastings ]
There is nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream. [ Moore ]
Old men remember such things as they delighted in when young. [ Proverb ]
Ugliness, after virtue, is the best guardian of a young woman. [ Mme. de Genlis ]
Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food. [ Joubert ]
Better never have been handsome when young, than ugly when old. [ Proverb ]
An old wise man's shadow is better than a young buzzard's sword. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Hang a thief when he's young, and he'll no steal when he's auld. [ Scotch Proverb ]
Take heed of a young wench, a prophetess, and a Latin-bred woman. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The offspring of those that are very young or very old lasts not. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Young men think old men fools; but old men know the young are so. [ Proverb ]
To remember- to forget: alas! this is what makes us young or old. [ A. de Musset ]
A young woman married to an old man, must behave like an old woman. [ Proverb ]
In a better world we will find our young years and our old friends. [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be so. [ Camden ]
Half light, half shade, she stood a sight to make an old man young. [ Tennyson ]
If you lie upon roses when young, you will lie upon thorns when old. [ Proverb ]
To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life. [ Lowell ]
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
The first article that a young trader offers for sale is his honesty. [ Proverb ]
On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. [ Hafiz ]
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be. [ Goethe ]
Better have an old man to humour, than a young rake to break your heart. [ Proverb ]
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools. [ George Chapman ]
To blame a young man for being in love is like chiding one for being ill. [ Duclos ]
If you would take a peep at sunshine, look in the face of a young mother. [ Fanny Fern ]
Nothing's more playful than a young cat, nor more grave than the old one. [ Proverb ]
I am young, it is true; but in noble souls, valor does not wait for years. [ Corneille ]
To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure. [ Ben Jonson ]
In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better partner than an old queen. [ De Finod ]
Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when grown up. [ Proverb ]
I resemble the poplar, - that tree which, even when old, still looks young. [ Joubert ]
When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death. [ La Bruyere ]
An old coquette has all the defects of a young one, and none of her charms. [ A. Dupuy ]
The inward fragrance of a young girl's heart is what crystallizes into love. [ Richter ]
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. [ Emerson ]
Sweet the young muse with love intense. Which smiles over sleeping innocence. [ Smart ]
So live, that thy young and glowing breast can think of death without a sigh. [ Eliza Cook ]
Deal mildly with his youth; for young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more. [ William Shakespeare ]
The young writer should remember that bigness is not greatness, nor fury force. [ George William Curtis ]
The tears of a young widow lose their bitterness when wiped by the hands of love.
Do you know a young and beautiful woman who is not ready to flirt - just a little? [ J. Petit-Senn ]
Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses. [ Bacon ]
The beauty of a young girl should speak to the imagination, and not to the senses. [ A. Karr ]
If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old. [ Lord Chesterfield ]
There will always be romance in the world so long as there are young hearts in it. [ Bovee ]
Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can. [ Richter ]
It is sweet to die young! It is sweet to render to God a life still full of illusions! [ A. Chenier ]
Wise men, like wine, are best when old; pretty women, like bread, are best when young. [ Haliburton ]
The heart is always young only in the recollection of those whom it has loved in youth. [ Arsene Houssaye ]
He rejoices more than an old man who has put off old age, (i.e. has become young again). [ Proverb ]
When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over. [ George MacDonald ]
Hence it is that old men do plant young trees, the fruit whereof another age shall take. [ Sir J. Davies ]
Error is very well so long as we are young, but we must not drag it with us into old age. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them. [ Goethe ]
Wise, well-calculated breeding of a young soul lies fatally over the horizon in these epochs. [ Carlyle ]
Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
He whom the gods love dies young, while he is in health, has his senses and his judgment sound. [ Plautus ]
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is,
prose = words in their best order;
poetry = the best words in the best order. [ Coleridge ]
Young, one is rich in all the future that he dreams; old, one is poor in all the past he regrets. [ Rochepedre ]
When a young man complains that a young lady has no heart, it is pretty certain that she has his. [ G. D. Prentice ]
I have been young, and am now old, and have not yet known an untruthful man to come to a good end. [ Berthold Auerbach ]
Beautiful as sweet! and young as beautiful! and soft as young! and gay as soft! and innocent as gay! [ Young ]
To make love when one is young and fair is a venial sin: it is a mortal sin when one is old and ugly. [ De Bernis ]
I am young; I have passed but the half of the road of life, and, already weary, I turn and look back! [ A. de Musset ]
A friendship will be young after the lapse of a century; a passion is old at the end of three months. [ Nigu ]
Not to enjoy one's youth, when one is young, is to imitate the miser who starves beside his treasures. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. [ Chesterfield ]
Glances in a young woman are charming interpreters, which express what the lips would not dare to speak.
He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. I speak unto the young, for I am of them and always shall be. [ Bailey ]
The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty. [ Goethe ]
The affection of young ladies is of as rapid growth as Jack's beanstalk, and reaches up to the sky in a night. [ Thackeray ]
I have seen young ladies of twenty-five affecting a childish ingenuousness which has made me doubt their virtue.
Life sues the young like a new acquaintance.... To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend. [ Goldsmith ]
If you're a young Mafia gangster out on your first date, I bet it's real embarrassing if someone tries to kill you. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. [ Swift ]
To continue eternally young is, as poets write, the highest bliss of life; wouldst thou attain to it, thou must die young. [ Rückert ]
There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of the immortals. [ Hazlitt ]
Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it. [ Wycherley ]
The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading while we are young. I have had as much of this pleasure perhaps as any one. [ Hazlitt ]
Who can blame me if I cherish the belief that the world is still young, - that there are great possibilities in store for it? [ Tyndall ]
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters. [ Emerson ]
Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing-point. [ Douglas Jerrold ]
Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
The Soul is born old, but it grows young; that is the comedy of life. The Body is born young and grows old; that is Life's tragedy. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Death is as near to the young as to the old; here is all the difference: death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face. [ Rev. T. Adams ]
I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five and twenty. [ Dryden ]
It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Young voices around the domestic altar, breathing sacred music at the hour of morning and evening devotion, are a sweet and touching accompaniment. [ K. Arvine ]
It is books that teaches us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enables us to recall them with satisfaction when old. [ L. Hunt ]
Good books are to the young mind what the wanning sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. [ H. Mann ]
Women live only in the emotion that love gives. An old lady confessed that she had loved much,when young: Ah!
she exclaimed, the exquisite pain of those days!
[ A. Houssaye ]
The presence of a young girl is like the presence of a flower; the one gives its perfume to all that approach it, the other her grace to all that surround her. [ Louis Desnoyers ]
Women are only told that they resemble angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them homage. [ Phoebe Gary ]
Nothing lives in literature but that which has in it the vitality of the creative art; and it would be safe advice to the young to read nothing but what is old. [ K P. Whipple ]
A good library is an anchor to keep a young man from roving, and a helm to aid an old man to gain the greatest possible benefit from what remains of the breeze. [ W. D. Haley ]
Every day is a gift I receive from heaven; let us enjoy today that which it bestows on me. It belongs not more to the young than to me, and tomorrow belongs to no one. [ Mancroix ]
The young mind is naturally pliable and imitative, but in a more advanced state it grows rigid, and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression. [ Joshua Reynolds ]
Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael. [ Goethe ]
The heart never grows better by age, I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. [ Chesterfield ]
In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul. [ Emerson ]
A young woman should regard that propriety of attire which insures the strictest neatness, and modestly conform to those unobjectionable points which are the freaks of custom. [ C. Butler ]
A misanthrope was told of a young friend of his: Your friend has no experience of the world; he knows nothing about it.
True; but he is already as sad as if he knew all about it.
Monkeys, as soon as they have brought forth their young, keep their eyes fastened on them, and never weary of admiring their beauty; so amorous is Nature of whatever she produces. [ John Dryden ]
The reading of romances will always be the favorite amusement of women: old, they peruse them to recall what they have experienced; young to anticipate what they wish to experience. [ A. Ricard ]
Genius never grows old - young today, mature yesterday, vigorous tomorrow, always immortal. It is peculiar to no sex or condition, and is the divine gift to woman no less than to man. [ Juan Lewis ]
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Receives the lurking principle of death; The young disease, that must subdue at length. Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength. [ Pope ]
Rarity gives a charm: thus early fruits are most esteemed; thus winter roses obtain a higher price; thus coyness sets off an extravagant mistress; a door ever open attracts no young suitor. [ Martial ]
Men commonly injure one another without cause, and simply to do something: as an idle promenader in a garden, breaks the young branches, and strips off the leaves of the most beautiful flowers. [ E. Souvestre ]
It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity. [ M. M. Brewster ]
Flowers are the bright remembrances of youth; they waft us back, with their bland, odorous breath, the joyous hours that only young life knows, ere we have learnt that this fair earth hides graves. [ Countess of Blessington ]
Friendship is impossible between men of high social standing and men in the lower walks of life; very difficult between a young man and a young woman; between two beautiful women, it is but a poetic fiction.
One must always regret that law of growth which renders necessary that kittens should spoil into demure cats, and bright, joyous school-girls develop into the spiritless, crystallized beings denominated young ladies. [ Abba Goold Woolson ]
A woman whose great beauty eclipses all others is seen with as many different eyes as there are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport. [ D'Argens ]
If a young lady has that discretion and modesty without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more than on displaying what she has. [ Hannah More ]
Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all kinds, - epic, tragedy, lyric. If we can touch the imagination, we serve them; they will never forget it. [ Emerson ]
In the life of a nation ideas are not the only things of value. Sentiment also is of great value; and the way to foster sentiment in a people, and to develop it in the young, is to have a well-recorded past, and to be familiar with it. [ Joseph Anderson ]
Now, my young friends to whom I am addressing myself, with reference to this habit of reading, I make bold to tell you that it is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. [ Anthony Trollope ]
To be left alone in the wide world with scarcely a friend, - this makes the sadness which, striking its pang into the minds of the young and the affectionate, teaches them too soon to watch and interpret the spirit-signs of their own hearts. [ Hawthorne ]
Persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul, wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Perhaps God does with His heavenly garden as we do with our own. He may chiefly stock it from nurseries, and select for transplanting what is yet in its young and tender age - flowers before they have bloomed, and trees ere they begin to bear. [ Rev. Dr. Guthrie ]
How many who, after having achieved fame and fortune, recall with regret the time when - ascending the hills of life in the sun of their twentieth year - they had nothing but courage, which is the virtue of the young, and hope, which is the treasure of the poor! [ H. Murger ]
The tending of flowers has ever appeared to me a fitting care for the young and beautiful; they then dwell, as it were, among their own emblems, and many a voice of wisdom breathes on their ear from those brief blossoms, to which they apportion the dew and the sunbeam. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
The young man may applaud the negligent and pusillanimous instructor; but when that man, no longer young, suffers the result of that neglect and pusillanimity, it is well if a better spirit had taught him to mention the name of that instructor without bitter execration. [ F. Wayland ]
Bear your burden manfully. Boys at school, young men who have exchanged boyish liberty for serious business - all who have got a task to do, a work to finish - bear the burden till God gives the signal for repose - till the work is done, and the holiday is fairly earned. [ James Hamilton ]
Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them; almost all women; a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel readers, as well as young boys and girls, and their kind, tender mothers. [ Thackeray ]
A blushing young damsel of 109 has just died at Mallow, Ireland. She had been an ardent smoker of twist tobacco for 81 years, and finally died in the bloom of her youth. To make matters worse, she was an orphan. Those who do not wish to die young should make a note of this. [ Tobacco Jokes For Smoking Folks, 1888 ]
It is a beautiful self-denial for the affluent to set an example of neatness, plainness, and simplicity. Such an influence is peculiarly salutary in our state of society, where the large class of young females, who earn a subsistance by labor, are so addicted to the love of finery. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
Young women, the glory of your life is to do something, and to be something. You may have formed the idea that ease and personal enjoyment are the ends of your life. This is a terrible mistake. Development, in the broadest sense and in the highest direction, is the end of your life. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admire, - they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly. [ Thackeray ]
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day. [ Hawthorne ]
Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. [ Chesterfield ]
As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers. [ E. Law ]
A wound in the friendship of young persons, as in the bark of young trees, may be so grown over as to leave no scar; the case is very different in regard to old persons and old timber. The reason of this may be accountable from the decline of the social passions, and the prevalence of spleen, suspicion, and rancor toward the latter part of life. [ Shenstone ]
It is all very well to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph, but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial. [ Charles James Fox ]
A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second; for there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages; and yet the invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely. [ Bacon ]
Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times, when they had nothing else to do. It has been by that means,
said he to a boy at our house one day, that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk.
[ Mrs. Piozzi ]
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]
When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar! [ Carlyle ]
Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height. [ Bruyere ]
Whatever we may say against such collections which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem, to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of the mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant quotations." [ Goethe ]
No woman is a genius: women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. They represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the colored. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for respectability you have merely to take them down to supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try to look young. Our grandmothers painted in order to try to talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to go together. That has all gone out now. As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she is perfectly satisfied. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]