Youth

"We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so."

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together; Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full of sport, ages breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame. Age, I do abhor thee; youth I do adore thee."

"Every stage of life has its own set of manners, that is suited to it, and best becomes it. Each is beautiful in its season; and you might as well quarrel with the childs rattle, and advance him directly to the boys top and span-farthing, as expect from diffident youth the manly confidence of riper age."

"Nature has done well and wisely, in not permitting a man to live forever and in bringing into the world ever new generations. An old person is a used-up machine [... He] has too many dogmas to [...] easily [...] believe in a new truth [...]; too many sympathies and antipathies [...] for him to come to love something unfamiliar; [...] too many habits to be able to settle on new ways. Let us add suspiciousness — the fruit of bitter experiences; a pessimism inseparable from all manner of disappointments; and finally, a general decline of powers from exhaustion [...]."

"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books."

"Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!"

"On one of our regular Friday night visits to the Seventy-third Street public library, my father encourage me to borrow s celebrated 1926 book, Microbe Hunters. In it were fascinating stories of how infectious diseases were being conquered by scientists who went after bad germs with the same tenacity as Sherlock Holmes pursuing the evil Dr. Moriarity. Some months later I brought home Arrowsmith, in which Sinclair Lewis, helped by Paul de Kruif as expert consultant, relates the never-realized hope of his hero to save victims from by treating then with bacteria-killing viruses. The s youth gripped me and made me realize that science could be like : a young mans game whose stars made their mark in their early twenties."

"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly rising oer the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm."

"Youth, what mans age is like to be, doth show; We may our ends by our beginnings know."

"We have all seen with a sense of nausea the abject, squalid, shameless avowal made in the Oxford Union. We are told that we ought not to treat it seriously. The Times talked of "the childrens hour". I disagree. It is a very disquieting and disgusting symptom. One can almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy, and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England. Let them be assured that it is not the last word. But before they blame, as blame they should, these callow ill-tutored youths, they must be sure that they have not been set a bad example by people much older and much higher up."

"Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth."

"Young men are fitter to invent, than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business;… Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and that, which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them, like an unruly horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."