We Were Young Once Quotes & Sayings

I think all of us felt," I said, "at least once in our lives, when we were young, we could go over there, after reading the bull stuff in the Spanish stories, that we could go over there and fight. Or at least jog ahead of the running of the bulls, in the early morning, with a good drink waiting at the other end of the run, and your best girl with you there for the long weekend." I stopped. I laughed quietly. For my voice had, without knowing, fallen into the rhythm of his way of saying, either out of his mouth, or from his hand. — Ray Bradbury

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? — John Steinbeck

We met each other when we were young, before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it. — Nicole Krauss

People often ask authors where their ideas come from, and often authors say they don't know. But I do know about this one. Once upon a time, my wife and I had three small children
two boys and a girl, just like in the story. And when they were young, we used to tell them a story very like YOU'RE ALL MY FAVORITES. — Sam McBratney

We guided our children. We supported them. We were there for them. But once you start going through your list of schools that present a potential opportunity, a young man or a young woman has to be happy with their decision. If they are unhappy, then their whole four years of college are going to be some of the most miserable memories of their lifetime. — Craig Biggio

I've always been fascinated by young women who come to New York. The characters in 'Lipstick Jungle' were once young women who came to New York and we see their early experiences through flashbacks. — Candace Bushnell

The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet. — G.K. Chesterton

There had never been a funeral in our town before, at least not during our lifetimes. The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn't exist and our fathers were impossibly skinny young men in black-and-white photographs - dads on jungle airstrips, dads with pimples and tattoos, dads with pinups, dads who wrote love letters to the girls who would become our mothers, dads inspired by K rations, loneliness and glandular riot in malarial air into poetic reveries that ceased entirely once they got back home. — Jeffrey Eugenides

There's no great dividing line between being a kid and an adult. We're not all caterpillars turning into butterflies. You are what you are. When you grow up, you may be more careful than when you were a kid. You don't say what you think as much as you once did. You learn to play nice. But you're still the same person who did good things or rotten things when you were young. Whether you feel good about them or bad ... whether you regret them. Well, that's a different thing. But it's not like they disappear forever. — Matthew Dicks

But we were all young once. It passes, like innocence and a sense of fair play. The only thing left in the end is a good instinct for survival. — Laurell K. Hamilton

What cords seem almost unbreakable? In the case of mortals of a choice and lofty nature they will be those of duty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity and tenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy, that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand that guided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray - their sublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. The great liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake: the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth - it comprehends not itself what is taking place. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Think of me, think of me fondly When we've said goodbye Remember me once in a while Please promise me, you'll try ... Recall those days, look back on all those times Think of those things we'll never do There will never be a day When I won't think of you ... Can it be? Can it be Christine ... Long ago, it seems so long ago How young and innocent we were She may not remember me But I remember her — Andrew Lloyd Webber

If we could only go back and knock some sense into those kids we once were. — Samantha Young

Dear my older brother,
I understand you love me, that you care for your little sister. I remember you beat up a bully once on the bus, and how you kept that frightening image of youself for the sake of my safety. I remember how ever since we were young and I cried, you would go out of your way to make me calm down.When you found out who I liked, you would secretly interrogate their older siblings to figure out what this guy was like.
But you don't need to worry anymore. That was almost a decade ago. You're an adult now. I'm not yours to baby anymore, because soon I'll be an adult too.
Love,
Your little sister — Emily Trunko

If you are waging peace, you can't be too particular sometimes about the special attitudes that different countries take. We were a young country once, and our whole policy for the first 150 years was, we were neutral. We must not be parsimonious, as long as we are not shooting, we are not spending one tenth as much. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Your mother and I had always been secretly pleased that you were so headstrong and passionate about your causes. Once you were gone, we understood that these were the qualities that painted young men as smart and ambitious and young women as trouble. — Karin Slaughter

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean - even if it did build muscle - whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period ... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. — Christopher Hitchens

The presence of a grandparent confirms that parents were, indeed, little once, too, and that people who are little can grow to be big, can become parents, and one day even have grandchildren of their own. So often we think of grandparents as belonging to the past; but in this important way, grandparents, for young children, belong to the future. — Fred Rogers

He squinted up at the straining muscular backs of the stone men supporing the dome. "You'll have to take me to some museums," he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men's rooms across the country. "But I did see a show of Hopper once. And I like his light. It was kind of lonely or something.
Or, "The world's a mess, it's in my kiss,' like John and Exene say," he mumbled. We were in a leather store on Market Street being punks on acid with skunk-striped hair and steel-toed boots. — Francesca Lia Block

We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty. — Muriel Barbery

The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia. — Antal Szerb

When I was a young man, I didn't think about having a family. My wife and I were too poor to have babies. Then all of a sudden, one came along and scared the hell out of us because we had no money. Once the baby arrives, you make do somehow. You fall in love with the baby and life adjusts itself. You find you don't need as much money as you thought. When that happens, you can ask the questions that should have come before the baby. — Ray Bradbury

Once we were young, now we are adult. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we'd be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods. He kissed my feet, the boy I was with, and when he smiled, he had a gold tooth.
It was only a field of buttercups, but we were young. — Jeanette Winterson

We dressed ourselves up as Gauguin pictures and careered round Crosby Hall. Mrs. Whitehead was scandalized. She said that Vanessa and I were practically naked. My mother's ghost was invoked once more ... to deplore the fact that I had taken a house in Brunswick Square and had asked young men to share it ... Stories began to circulate about parties at which we all undressed in public. Logan Pearsall Smith told Ethel Sands that he knew for a fact that Maynard had copulated with Vanessa on a sofa in the middle of the drawing room. It was a heartless, immoral, cynical society it was said; we were abandoned women and our friends were the most worthless of young men. — Virginia Woolf

14. Muddy Road
Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unble to cross the intersection.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carriedher over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her? — Nyogen Senzaki

Number 23 had plenty of redeeming qualities that made falling for him a justifiable accident. But our connection had nothing to do with our similarities, our differences, our aesthetic attractions, or our emotional and physical needs. When we spoke, he was truly with me. Our egos, our personas, expected social cues, the facades that everyone builds around them that are supposed to sculpt the way the world sees us, were stripped with Number 23 and I. He was immediately my best friend, familiar and safe - an epiphany that I had been spending my life alone in crowded rooms.
Our souls were naked. We initially curled into the warmth of that connection. But once we knew how real it was, we felt exposed, vulnerable, and raw. While his defense was his fearful recoil, mine was dictation. — Maggie Young

Having personally watched the Voting Rights Act being signed into law that August day, I can't begin to imagine how we could have all been so wrong in believing that more Americans would vote once they were all truly free to do so. — Andrew Young

I will tell you what Jews are like. Once, in the early months of the war, we were on the march, and we had halted at a village for the night. A horrible old Jew, with a red beard like Judas Iscariot, came sneaking up to my billet. I asked him what he wanted. 'Your honour,' he said, 'I have brought a girl for you, a beautiful young girl only seventeen. It will only be fifty francs.' 'Thank you,' I said, 'you can take her away again. I don't want to catch any diseases.' 'Diseases!' cried the Jew, 'mais, monsieur le capitaine, there's no fear of that. It's my own daughter!' That is the Jewish national character for you. — George Orwell

Such is life. And it does go on, in the young ones and the things we leave behind. Is the pain of losing them not worth the delight it was having them?" said Grandma Lilly when I was finished.
"I don't know," I said. "This feels pretty bad."
She wrapped her thin arm around my shoulder and held it firmly. "Of course it does, but that is because you are in the throes of it, like you were once in the throes of love. Would you take it back? — Clare Bohning

We can heal. Perhaps we can return to that same place we once stood, when we were both young and innocent. — Marie Lu

When we are young we cannot know
what it is like to bigger grow
but why do grown-ups great and tall
so soon forget they once were small. — Marta Moran Bishop

Here's a question we all ask ourselves at least once when we're young: Where does that starlight come from? It's been there before I was born, and before my grandmother, and her grandmother were born. So just how far is that star from Earth? — Kim Young-ha

I once had a young musician come to me and say that he wanted to be a professional musician. I asked him to write his list. When he came back to me, the three things in his life he most wanted were: to be paid for his music; to travel around the world; to meet new people. We came to the decision, after thinking really creatively, that if he got a job on a cruise ship, he would fulfill those goals. — Phil Keoghan

For sure we live in a youth-obsessed culture that is constantly trying to tell us that if we're not young and glowing and "hot," we don't matter. But I refuse to buy into such a distorted view of reality. And I would never lie about or deny my age. To do so is to contribute to a sickness pervading our society - the sickness of wanting to be what you're not. I know for sure that only by owning who and what you are can you step into the fullness of life. I feel sorry for anyone who buys into the myth that you can be what you once were. The way to your best life isn't denial. It's owning every moment and staking a claim to the here and now. You're not the same woman you were a decade ago; if you're lucky, you're not the same woman you were last year. The whole point of aging, as I see it, is change. If we let them, our experiences can keep teaching us about ourselves. I celebrate that. Honor it. Hold it in reverence. And I'm grateful for every age I'm blessed to become. — Oprah Winfrey

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other. — David Almond

Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good. — Plutarch

Once we were driving in the midwest and we pulled into a McDonald's. Someone came up to me and asked me why I have Feynman diagrams all over my van. I replied, "Because I am Feynman!" The young man went, "Ahhhhh!" — Richard P. Feynman

Poor Metias. He's not supposed to be a father. He's supposed to be out on his own, independent and free to concentrate on his job as a young captain. But somebody has to take care of me, and I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. I wonder what things must have been like for him back when our parents were still alive, when I was a toddler and Metias was a teenager and he could focus on growing up instead of helping someone else grow up. Still, Metias hasn't complained once. Not a single time. And even though I wish our parents were here, sometimes I'm really happy that this is our little family unit, just me and my brother, each watching out for no one but the other. We do the best we can. — Marie Lu

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty. — Megan Chance

We Americans often say that marriage is hard work. I'm not sure that the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work
I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements - but how does marriage become hard work? Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband - more than anything else - is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency" or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be INSPIRED by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey! — Elizabeth Gilbert

Higher salaries were not the only way the government strove to staunch the bleeding. In the past, before admin salaries were raised, government leaders intervened when officers they considered key were targeted. Dr Goh Keng Swee, then still in the Cabinet, once told me: "We only let you take those we were prepared to release." In one celebrated case, in the early 1960s, he personally stepped in to stop one important hire. The paper's British management had recruited Herman Hochstadt, a rising young officer who later became permanent secretary. The morning he was to start work, even before he could settle in his chair at Times House, he found that Dr Goh had demanded his return to the civil service. — Cheong Yip Seng

Personal change, growth, development, identity formation
these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events
a job, a mate, a child
through which we will pass into a life of relative ease. — Lillian B. Rubin

If it weren't for the great Scottish missionary David Livingstone, the Yao and Chewa might still be at odds today. Livingstone helped end slavery, opened Malawi to trade, and built good schools and missions. Young men became educated and earned money, and once these economic opportunities were available to all, our two tribes had little reason to fight. Today we consider the Yao our brothers and sisters. My — William Kamkwamba

That had been the end of Communism. I had a feeling watching the tape that America would be next, but for once I kept my mouth shut. In my silence I felt our common ground: here we were, two men, neither young, neither with money, neither earning a penny or holding down a job or owning a house, both thoroughly confused by the way the world was turning. — Don J. Snyder

Several weeks of summer vacation in the Thirties I spent working at $15 a week in the FORBES office ... I worked in the mail cage, where envelopes were slit and subscription payments extracted. Dad used to come pounding down the office aisle and pause long enough to ask, How much today? Inevitably the answer was inadequate-except once. That day the controller said excitedly, Mr. Forbes, the ledger shows a slight profit this month! ... My father turned to him and said, Young man, I don't give a damn what your books show. Do we have any money in the bank? — Malcolm Forbes

What's the last thing you remember?" I ask instead. "Dancing." "You were at a bar, a nightclub? In Boston?" It takes her a bit, but finally, "Y-y-yes." "Did you drink too much?" A small hiccup I take to be yes. Kids, I think. We're all so young and fearless once. Nightclubs are nothing but a source of adventure. And a fourth, fifth, sixth rum runner the best idea in the world. I hated myself for my own stupidity, waking up in a coffin-size box. Minute after minute, day after day, so much time to do nothing but repent. And — Lisa Gardner

By the time the sixties hit their home bases, we the kids, were already born, and our parents found themselves stuck between an entrenched belief that children needed to be raised in a traditional household, and a new sense that anything was possible, that the alternative lifestyle was out there for the asking. There they were in marriages they once thought were a necessity and with children they'd had almost by accident in a world that was suddenly saying, 'No necessities! No accidents! Drop Everything!' A little too old to take full advantage of the cultural revolution, our parents just got all the fallout. Freedom hit them obliquely, and invidiously, rather than head-on. Instead of waiting longer to get married, our parents got divorced; Instead of becoming feminists, our mothers were left to become displaced homemakers. A lot of unhappy situations were dissolved by people who were not quite young or free enough to start again. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

When I didn't say anything, he came closer, dropping slowly to his haunches so we were at eye level. My eyes searched his gorgeous face and for once, I wished I could break my own damn rules. I had a feeling Braden would be able to make me forget everything for a while.
We gazed at one another for what seemed like forever, not saying a word. I was expecting a lot of questions since it must have been clear to everyone, or at least the adults at the table, that I had had a panic attack. Surely, they were all wondering why, and I really didn't want to go back out there.
"Better?" Braden finally asked softly.
Wait. Was that it? No probing questions?
"Yeah." No, not really.
He must have read my reaction to his question in my face because he cocked his head to the side, his gaze thoughtful. "You don't need to tell me."
I cracked a humorless smile. "I'll just let you think I'm bat-shit crazy."
Braden smiled back at me. "I already know that. — Samantha Young

Another time I had gone out on patrol in the mist and had carefully warned the guard commander beforehand. But in coming back I stumbled against a bush, the startled sentry called out that the Fascists were coming, and I had the pleasure of hearing the guard commander order everyone to open rapid fire in my direction. Of course I lay down and the bullets went harmlessly over me. Nothing will convince a Spaniard, at least a young Spaniard, that fire-arms are dangerous. Once, rather later than this, I was photographing some machine-gunners with their gun, which was pointed directly towards me. 'Don't fire,' I said half-jokingly as I focused the camera. 'Oh no, we won't fire.' The next moment there was a frightful roar and a stream of bullets tore past my face so close that my cheek was stung by grains of cordite. It was unintentional, but the machine-gunners considered it a great joke. — George Orwell

We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves. — William Hazlitt

You're not untrustworthy, you're not cold and you're not a bitch. You have ... issues. I get that. We all have issues. But once I realized you were lying to me, I began to understand why. You think you never gave yourself away with me. You think you have time to backpedal and pretend nothing happened between us, because that way if anything ever happens to me, you can tell yourself you don't care, and you don't feel the pain. — Samantha Young

The whole human earth was bleeding.
Time, buildings, routes, rain,
erase the constellation of the crime,
the fact is, this small planet
has been covered a thousand times by blood,
war or vengeance, ambush or battle,
people fell, they were devoured,
and later oblivion wiped clean
each square meter: sometimes
a vague, dishonest monument,
other times a clause in bronze,
and still later, conversations, births,
townships, and then oblivion.
What arts we have for extermination
and what science to obliterate memory!
What was bloody is covered with flowers.
Once more, young men, ready yourselves
for another chance to kill, to die again,
and to scatter flowers over the blood. — Pablo Neruda

We met with more closed doors than open ones
and the people who answered our knocks were invariably older. Young people didn't aswner the door to strangers, who would undoubtedly be trying to sell something, any more than they would answer the telephone to telemarketers once Caller ID came along. The only people we encountered going door-to-door were the ones old enough to remember when that's the way the world worked. — J. Mark Bertrand