Quotes About Youth

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

And I can't say it now. I can't say what I want to say. I hold you-- I-- I clutch you, because I love you so desperately, and time is so short, we have such a little time in which to live and be young, even at best, and I put my arms around you and hold you because I want to love you while I can and I want to know I'm loving you, only it doesn't mean anything because you aren't afraid. You aren't frightened so that you want to clutch it all while you can.

Now wonder our youth is confused and in pain; they long for God, for the transcendent, and they are offered, far too often, either piosity or sociology, neither of which meets their needs, and they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are a safe place to go to escape the awful demands of God.

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama five years ago, and only then discovered the conflict between races, asked me, Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all? Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.

If a book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death.

I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine.

The very young woman can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be tender.

If the book will be too difficult for grownups, then you write it for children.

An old ass knows more than a young colt

Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it.

All I knew was that at almost fifteen it's very difficult to be satisfied with the age you are, because you aren't really any age.

I'm too young and the world is too old

Like everything else - Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads - it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school.

the European attitude that the very young can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be truly tender.

Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads—"it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school.

It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school.

Oh, girl, not woman, more than child, Which of us two is the more wild? So

I saw two beings in the hues of the youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill... And both were young-- and one was beautiful -The Dream, Canto II Lord Byron

She looked nice, he thought, when she was being enthusiastic and cheering him up, she looked young herself. It was when her face was discontented that she developed the pouting, double-chinned look of her mother—a woman who had been born disagreeable and lived to make life disagreeable for everyone round her until last year when she got a coronary right in the middle of complaining that she hadn't got enough presents for her seventieth birthday.

You young people are always so obsessed with truth. The truth is often overrated.

When's your birthday, Eric?" Lisa asked. "This August," he said. "You and Cassie both have summer birthdays," Kelly observed. "She's in late August." "You two are both turning sixteen

It occurred to me that kids could easily take over the world. They could hack in and use our own technology against us. Or just decide to stop helping us figure it out to begin with. Either way, we adults would be relegated to a life of servitude and there would be weekly keggers in the White House rose garden. The only reason this hasn't already happened is that the kids haven't figured it out yet. When

It occurred to me that kids could easily take over the world. They could hack in and use our own technology against us. Or just decide to stop helping us figure it out to begin with. Either way, we adults would be relegated to a life of servitude and there would be weekly keggers in the White House rose garden. The only reason this hasn't already happened is that the kids haven't figured it out yet. When they buy a clue, it's gonna suck to be a grown-up.