Quotes About Youth

In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.

Kids today have the attention span of high-speed lint.

The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory.

People in their 30s know where the world is going because they're going to do it. I'm in my 80s so I have no idea.

A chi gli chiedeva reminiscenze della sua gioventù, il professore rispondeva che non può esserci niente del genere e che i ricordi, a differenza delle calcografie e delle lettere, non riportano una data. Le cose si conservano nella memoria e solo con la riflessione una persona riesce a sistemarle in un ordine temporale.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

In the beginning of life, we're on fire and want to change the world. Yet as we get older, we realize how difficult that is, so we think that if we can have a positive influence on those around us, we'll have lived a worthwhile life. As we get older still, we understand that we can change no one, and simply look for the courage to change ourselves.

When you're young you say, "If I become a vegetable, pull the plug!" You get older, you hedge a little. "If I'm a turnip, kill me. If I'm a trendier vegetable, like radicchio, mist me twice a day and trim the wilted leaves."

Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends.

The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.

With disillusioned smiles, we allow our young people to tempt or try out their passion, desire, and sensorality, knowing that one day they will be like us, weary and well behaved out of obligation.

The military could get by with fewer recruits because more in the ranks reenlisted. The quality of the volunteers turned out to be good, because the services insisted on drug-free high-school graduates with clean criminal records, criteria that ruled out 70 percent of American youth. (There is an unfortunate message in that statistic.) Smarter, tougher, and willing, volunteers trained and worked to their limits.

What we need to understand is that books weren't written so that young people could write essays about them, but so that they could read them if they really wanted to. Knowledge, academic track record, career, and social life are one thing. Our intimacy and cultural awareness as readers are quite another.

Vous ne vous rendez pas compte, monsieur, j'ai douze ans et demi, et je n'ai rien fait.

The children became their reciprocal angels: readers.

Insegnare è proprio questo: ricominciare fino a scomparire come professori. Se non riusciamo a collocare i nostri studenti nell'indicativo presente della nostra lezione, se il nostro sapere e il piacere di servirsene non attecchiscono su quei ragazzini e quelle ragazzine, nel senso botanico del termine, la loro esistenza vacillerà sopra vuoti infiniti.

Non si riuscirà mai a far capire a un ragazzo che, la sera, è nel bel mezzo di una storia avvincente, non si riuscirà mai a fargli capire, con una dimostrazione limitata a lui stesso, che deve interrompere la lettura e andare a letto.- È Kafka a scrivere questo nel diario, il piccolo Franz, che papà avrebbe preferito veder passare tutte le notti della sua vita a fare conti.

Parlare di un'opera a degli adolescenti, e pretendere da loro che ne parlino può rivelarsi molto utile, ma non è un fine in sé. Il fine è l'opera. L'opera nelle loro mani. E il primo dei loro diritti, in materia di lettura, è il diritto di tacere.

Me quede estupefacto. Estos chiquillos... No solo nos creen omnipotentes cuando vivimos, sino que además nos suponen toda clase de poderes después de la muerte" Pierre

And they were in love in spite of the ban on reading-even better. They were in love in spite of Mom and Dad, math homework, a French essay, a bedroom that needed tidying. They were too in love to go down for supper, they loved each other more than desert. They were too heads over heels to join in the soccer game or go mushroom picking. They had chosen each other and preferred each other to anyone else. My God, how beautiful love is. And how short that novel was.

Cosicché leggere era a quei tempi un atto sovversivo. Alla scoperta del romanzo si univa l'eccitazione di disobbedire alla famiglia. Duplice incanto! Oh, il ricordo di quelle ore di lettura rubate sotto le coperte alla luce di una torcia elettrica!

Young people's reluctance to read is all the harder to understand if you're of a generation, a time, a background, a family, where everyone always tried to keep you from reading.

Vergogna a coloro che fanno dei giovani più abbandonati un oggetto fantasmatico di terrore nazionale! Costoro sono la feccia di una società senza onore che ha perduto finanche il sentimento della paternità.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Eat pudding. Books are good. Eat pudding. If kids read a lot. Eat pudding. They'll get so they can think clearly. Eat pudding. And if enough kids read and think. Eat pudding. We will have world peace. Eat pudding. Thank you very much. Eat pudding.