Wisdom And Youth Quotes & Sayings

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence - just getting through to the real part of your life - but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Youth would be too happy, might it add to its own beauty and felicity the wisdom and experience of riper years. Were it possible for it to realize the worth of time, as life's receding hours reveal it, how rapidly would it press on towards perfection! — Lydia Sigourney

I think there has always been an obsession with youth and beauty. What's missing is the equal obsession with respect for ... older people ... and their wisdom and knowledge and courage. — Julie Christie

Pleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation. — Voltaire

For he had acquired a lore in his youth which taught him ever to avoid the aged when merry plans were afoot; for the aged would come with their wisdom and slowness of thought, and other plans would be made, and there would be, at least, delay. — Lord Dunsany

To have the spirit of youth and the wisdom from age. Is to have used the eternal fountain of life within our very souls. Not for an instant but for a lifetime. Amen. — Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community. — Jean Vanier

Mentors have their own strengths and weaknesses. The good ones allow you to develop your own style and then to leave them when the time is right. Such types can remain lifelong friends and allies. But often the opposite will occur. They grow dependent on your services and want to keep you indentured. They envy your youth and unconsciously hinder you, or become overcritical. You must be aware of this as it develops. Your goal is to get as much out of them as possible, but at a certain point you may pay a price if you stay too long and let them subvert your confidence. Your submitting to their authority is by no means unconditional, and in fact your goal all along is eventually to find your way to independence, having internalized and adapted their wisdom. — Robert Greene

Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they have only themselves to think of. — Hermann Hesse

There is no man," [the painter Elstir] began, "however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man - so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise - unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
Marcel Proust
Within a Budding Grove (translated by C. Scott Moncrieff) — Marcel Proust

They (the youth of Australia) are out there clamouring in all forms of voice, and they are not so much hedging us older Australians aside as saying, 'For heaven's sake, listen to us and empower us to help drive this country towards a wonderful future.' — Peter Cosgrove

Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with great taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to answer gravely: "It is granted thee. — Soren Kierkegaard

If man had the wisdom of age in youth and the vitality of youth in age, then he would be an eternally wise young man. (Feb 2003) — James King

God gives us all youth, and the takes it away again. What have you gained to offset that loss? Patience? Perhaps a little wisdom? Then be patient, and perhaps you'll also be wise. (Miriamele) — Tad Williams

I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms. — Benjamin Franklin

Youth is harmed by having wisdom thrust upon it. Youth must gather wisdom slowly, in laughter and tears. — Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Jesus probably studied this same information, in his youth. The apostle Paul probably studied this same information. How can I make such a bold assertion? Because, without this knowledge, much of the New Testament would make no sense.
Many of the idioms used in the New Testament are the result of lessons learned from this ancient Hebrew education system. Unfortunately, what was common in their day, has become forgotten in ours. For a Hebrew, math doesn't get in the way. It blazes the way. Other languages are disconnected from this mathematical relationship ... and it shows. — Michael Ben Zehabe

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. — Zora Neale Hurston

Show the youth the consequences of their actions and why they should choose wisely — Sunday Adelaja

To be a Jew is to belong to an old harmless race that has lived in every country in the world; and that has enriched every country it has lived in.
"It is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, industrious against idleness, kind against cruelty! It is to belong to a race that has given Europe its religion; its moral law; and much of its science-perhaps even more of its genius-in art, literature and music.
"This is to be a Jew; and you know now what is required of you! You have no country but the world; and you inherit nothing but wisdom and brotherhood. I do not say there are no bad Jews-userers; cowards; corrupt and unjust persons-but such people are also to be found among Christians. I only say to you this is to be a good Jew. Every Jew has this aim brought before him in his youth. He refuses it at his peril; and at his peril he accepts it. — Phyllis Bottome

If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the knowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

Her grandmother had a life, a life Claire hadn't known about or even imagined. She had tried so hard to know everything about Grandma Waverley, to be everything she was. But Grandma Waverley must have sensed something in Sydney, a kindred soul, with Sydney's brightness and popularity. She gave Claire the wisdom of her old age, but she gave Sydney the secrets of her youth. — Sarah Addison Allen

One of the greatest challenge facing young people today, is the
large scale availability of half truth's and manipulated facts — Oche Otorkpa

The very old and the very young have something in common that makes it right that they should be left alone together. Dawn and sunset see stars shining in a blue sky; but morning and midday and afternoon do not, poor things. — Elizabeth Goudge

The beauty of collaboration between older and younger generations is that we combine strength with wisdom - a surefire way to accomplish more for the glory of God. — Brett Harris

In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare! — Homer

The sun of the mind, and the life of the heart is Wisdom. She is pure and full of light, crowning grey hairs with lustre, And kindling the eye of youth with a fire not its own. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

Distant singing is heard. Ghostly voices become audible: fragments of lectures remembered, the finely distilled wisdom and passion of seers and poets with which the modern young mind is tempered for the world that blows it to pieces. — Tennessee Williams

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant. — William Butler Yeats

I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals. — Patrick White

India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion
and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age — Jawaharlal Nehru

And when youth comes to age for advice he receives the wisdom of years. — George S. Clason

I'm not looking for the Fountain of Youth. . .I'm looking for the Fountain of Knowledge and Wisdom. — Devlin De La Chapa

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Misery comes to miser; joy comes to wiser. (A Very Hot Cup of Tea, Empathy)
Juvenile invites, youth tries, adult applies, and the old man dies. (A Straw Man, Empathy)
In everyone, there lives a superhero. (The Medicine Man, Empathy)
Faith is the strongest word in any dictionary. (The Wisdom Beard, Empathy)
I've entered into your feelings; it's your turn now. (Empathy) — D.R. Mirror

A wealth of experience and wisdom doesn't have to be a dead giveaway to your increasing years. The spin you put on it is what will keep you young. Don't let it make you bitter. Learn from it, and let it make you better. — Jayleigh Cape

In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the the largest — Walt Whitman

[T]hat mutual jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull. — H.G.Wells

Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization. — Bo Bennett

When I Was One-And-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
'Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
'The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. — A.E. Housman

The power of a king lies in his mighty arms; that of a brahmana in his spiritual knowledge; and that of a woman in her beauty youth and sweet words. — Chanakya

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself — Joseph Conrad

As every blossom fades
and all youth sinks into old age,
so every life's design, each flower of wisdom,
attains its prime and cannot last forever.
The heart must submit itself courageously
to life's call without a hint of grief,
A magic dwells in each beginning,
protecting us, telling us how to live.

High purposed we shall traverse realm on realm,
cleaving to none as to a home,
the world of spirit wishes not to fetter us
but raise us higher, step by step.
Scarce in some safe accustomed sphere of life
have we establish a house, then we grow lax;
only he who is ready to journey forth
can throw old habits off.

Maybe death's hour too will send us out new-born
towards undreamed-lands,
maybe life's call to us will never find an end
Courage my heart, take leave and fare thee well. — Hermann Hesse

The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet. — Francois Fenelon

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.
For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse of passion
youth's first fiery glow,
Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:
Vex not soul with dead philosophy,
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see! — Oscar Wilde

Each young person is a poet of sorts, trying to sort out the poetics of their inner life and its relation to the great world around it. Each elder is a philosopher of sorts, trying to sort out the meanings and gleanings of a life as well as the necessary implications of the presence of death. — Michael Meade

It has always been difficult for Jews to take Christians serious, mostly because Christians lack the fundamentals that religious Jews learn in their youth. It remains an embarrassing fact, that modern Jews can comprehend the New Testament better than modern Christians. There is no excuse for this. Christians have dropped the ball and should be anxious to remedy that neglect. Not only would they benefit themselves, but their community too. — Michael Ben Zehabe

Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Philosophically, Youth is Wisdom in formation, and with many thoughts startling to adult minds; and, industrially, this vast World's coming stability is now, today, in its bands; growing slowly, as a blossom grows from its bud. If you will furnish him with a thorough schooling, you can plank down your dollar that Youth, starting out from this miraculous day, will not lag nor shirk on that coming day in which old joints, rusty and crackling, must slow down; and, calling for an oil can, you will find that Youth only, is that lubrication which can run Tomorrow's World. — Ernest Vincent Wright

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth. — Sara Teasdale

The "yes" comes from my improvisational days and the opportunity that comes with youth, and the "please" comes from the wisdom of knowing that agreeing to do something usually means you aren't doing it alone. — Amy Poehler

The Coming of Wisdom with Time
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth. — W.B.Yeats

What I didn't know until right this very minute was how growing up happens in little surges. We grow up in moments - when we encounter such stupidities in ourselves that our only choice is to grow past them or into them. Maybe that's why some kids grow up too fast and others not at all. — Natalie C. Parker

Youth is a marvelous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife. The very young have their troubles, but they have at least a part to play, the part of being very young. — Iris Murdoch

As a lord was held
for the strength of his body and stoutness of heart.
Much lore he learned, and loved wisdom
but fortune followed him in few desires;
oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned;
what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not;
and full friendship he found not easily,
nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad.
He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldom
for the sundering sorrow that filled his youth ...
(On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin) — J.R.R. Tolkien

Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young. — Isaac Asimov

I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age- which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life- and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thoughts and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth. — Adolf Hitler

Her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius. — Gertrude Atherton

In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts.
They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds - which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air - the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance.
All of this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth. — Francis Assikinack

With age brings wisdom; with youth brings innovation. Combine the two and they are unstoppable. — Ocian Hamel-Smith

The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. — George Eliot

To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Fatherhood to us was an act of passion, soon forgot; but not to Orem ap Avonap. Never guessing that the blond and happy farmer was no blood of his, Orem had taken a part of that simple man into himself and saved it for this time. At any time in the Palace he might run by, Youth on this shoulders or, as time went by, toddling along behind. — Orson Scott Card

When I was eighteen or twenty, I knew everything except what I wanted. I knew all about people, and poetry, and love, and music, and politics, and baseball, and history, and I played pretty good jazz piano. And then I went traveling, because I felt that I might have missed something and it would be a good idea to learn it before I got my master's degree. (...) And the older I grew, and the farther I traveled, the younger I grew and the less I knew. I could feel it happening to me. I could actually walk down a dirty street and feel all my wisdom slipping away from me, all the things I wrote term papers about. — Peter S. Beagle

The thing that Buffalo Hump was most grateful for, as he rode into the emptiness, was the knowledge that in the years of his youth and manhood he had drawn the lifeblood of so many enemies. He had been a great killer; it was his way and the way of his people; no one in his tribe had killed so often and so well. The killings were good to remember, as he rode his old horse deeper into the llano, away from all the places where people came. — Larry McMurtry

You are still young enough to think that torment of the spirit is a splendid thing, a sign of a superior nature. But you are no longer a young man; you are a youngish middle aged man, and it is time you found out that these spiritual athletics do not lead to wisdom. — Robertson Davies

Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season. — Charlotte Bronte

Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age. — Anthony Trollope

Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying "yes" begins things. Saying "yes" is how things grow. Saying "yes" leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say "yes'. — Stephen Colbert

Exactly. I think the original tantric Buddhists took notice of was some very wise old people who never studied in their youth, but took part in a range of risk-taking adventures when they were younger, and finally became wise when they reflected upon their lives in old age. There is only one problem."
"Which is?"
"Risk-taking is a way to die young. It is dangerous and you may forfeit the opportunity to grow old. An early death is not a sure path to wisdom in old age," Ranjit said, running his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl, "and if you survive without reflecting, then you simply become an old degenerate. — Joe Niemczura

Can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and a lover of falsehood? Never. The true lover of learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth? Assuredly. But then again, as we know by experience, he whose desires are strong in one direction will have them weaker in others; they will be like a stream which has been drawn off into another channel. True. He whose desires are drawn towards knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily pleasure - I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one. That is most certain. Such — Plato

I felt so stupid and young, and at the same time something was cracking open inside me, or maybe it was the world was cracking open to show me something really important underneath. I knew I was only seeing a tiny bit of it, but it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen or felt before. — Ruth Ozeki

The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness. — Frank Herbert

I'm not opposed to aging - even though society is kinder on men than women when it comes to getting old. How can I look at aging as the enemy? It happens whether I like it or not and no one is set apart from growing old; it comes to us all. Youth passes from everyone, so why deny it? I'm proud of my age. I'm proud that I've survived this planet for as long as I have, and should I end up withered, wrinkled and with a lifetime of great wisdom, I'll trade the few years of youth for the sophistication of a great mind ... for however long it lasts. — Donna Lynn Hope

Man has boyhood, adolescence, youth, middle age and senescence, as stages of growth; there are also corresponding stages in the growth of wisdom in him. — Sathya Sai Baba

Looking around today, I see a lot of young people who act as if they have all the time in the world, and older persons who think this attitude is alright. It is unfortunate that there are young citizens who still believe life begins at forty and that life before forty is non-scoring, and older citizens who still insist that unless you are old, you have nothing to offer, equating age with wisdom. — Nana Awere Damoah

All the images of carnival are dualistic; they unite within themselves both poles of change and crisis: birth and death (the image of pregnant death), blessing and curse (benedictory carnival curses which call simultaneously for death and rebirth), praise and abuse, youth and old age, top and bottom, face and backside, stupidity and wisdom. — Mikhail Bakhtin

We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful. — Alexander McCall Smith

Keep the enthusiasm of your youth and treasure the wisdom of old age. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Time is an ethereal and sometimes cruel goddess. In her relentless passing, she steals away our youth and vitality, often in ways that seem insignificant until we finally realize how much she has taken. Still, she is also a generous deity, who offers to replace what she has seized with a deeper wisdom and a clearer vision of life's enigmas. In this sense, time can be our most powerful ally-if we are patient enough. — Michael Kelleher

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. — Robert A. Heinlein

It's amazing how when we were young we wanted to know what it felt like to be older and when we are older we want the feeling of being younger again. — DeWayne Owens

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why. — Stephen Vincent Benet

Drink from the fountain of youth and cloak yourself in the garments of wisdom. — Truth Devour

Don't wait till you have grey hair before you believe people will take you seriously because scientifically, grey hair is a sign of old age and not necessarily of wisdom. — Nana Awere Damoah

The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring
that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Symptoms of Love ...
The quickening of my heart I can hear my breath as it passes through my body like wind through branches of a tree.
The sensation in my chest the dreams in my head my body reacts as if exposed to a sudden change in the elements.
My mind wanders not focused on one particular thing like an innocent long ago in his youth. Oh how I desire to be with you when our bodies will meet and become one. — M.I. Ghostwriter

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young. — Margaret Atwood

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. — Henry David Thoreau

A lot of who you were in middle age was determined before you had a chance to manipulate, control, or eve understand the things around you. It was no mystery, he thought, why some old people's minds returned to their youth; the wonder of those years, the discoveries, the first experience with the dirty secret of death, and the first stirrings of lust and love were indelible, drawn in luminous colors on clean canvas. Indeed, the first sex act was so mind-boggling that most people could still remember it clearly twenty, thirty, sixty years later. — Nelson DeMille

I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals — Brigitte Bardot

If we are given a chance to go back to our youth, we won't go back, because we cannot give up our accumulated wisdom and we cannot give up the things that belong to our time! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I think it's nice to age gracefully. OK, you lose the youth, a certain stamina and dewy glow, but what you gain on the inside as a human being is wonderful: the wisdom, the acceptance and the peace of mind. It's a fair exchange. — Cherie Lunghi

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Personally I like ageing. With age comes wisdom and I have said it before and I say it again, I will take wisdom over youth any day. — Brad Pitt

Youth is marked by a breathtaking novelty that diminishes with each year of age - until life becomes a delusive struggle to break routines, escape the ordinary, and rediscover the joy of discovery. — Zack Love

On differing perspectives:

"At birth, we're yanked from a warm, safe place and thrust into a world we have no way of comprehending. Childhood is a constant routine of punishment and confusion. Hell we're depressed and misunderstood as teenagers, then frightened and unprepared as we become adults. In midlife, we watch as our youth slowly slips away; our dreams for greatness becoming pathetic memories. Old age brings loneliness, infirmity, and the constant fear of death."

"At birth, we're rescued from a dark, silent place and ushered into a world full of wonder. Childhood is a magical time, free from responsibility. We're curious and filled with energy as teenagers, and then challenged to reach our full potential as we become adults. In mid-life, we watch as our pretensions slowly slip away, our dreams for happiness finally becoming realized. Old age brings wisdom, wonderful memories, and a passionate love of life. — Rick Reynolds

Free a man of the constraints that limit and inhibit his development, and you have a free human being. Freedom is the natural state of man." He looked away from the boy for a moment and recalled his youth, his own search for self. "My boy," he imparted with a ferocious passion that shook them both by the throat, "there is nothing negative about our human potential - do you understand me? God Himself created you the way you are. Do not let anyone in this world convince you otherwise. And you are capable of anything, my boy. There is and shall always be a disparity among the gifts God has granted men, but we all deserve equal consideration. All men, no matter how low, how basic, or how tormented, deserve compassion, dignified brotherhood, and respect.
"But part of respecting all men is respecting ourselves. Recognizing that God has blessed you. By embracing these gifts, we live as God lives, with love for all He has created - with an open heart. — Alexandra Silber

As the child once fantasized that its wishes governed the world, and the youth fantasized that heroism could manage to do it all, so the person in the second half of life is obliged to come to a more sober wisdom based on a humbled sense of personal limitations and the inscrutability of the world. — James Hollis