Youth On Fire Quotes & Sayings

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Eight-and-twenty years,' said I, 'I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.'
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.
'Ay,' she broke in; 'and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty.' She swayed her head slowly from side to side. 'A many things to see and sorrow for.' ("The Red Room") — H.G.Wells

If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she'd be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death's a sure-fire method for stopping time. — Margaret Atwood

When you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well. — Charles Bukowski

I'd finally given her what she wanted,
the elixir of eternal youth, effected by the removal of her internal fire (the
catalyst of change) through the agency of death. — K.J. Parker

Drifting off to sleep, I imagined a spark from the comet floating down, down like a mote of stardust, to land inside my father, where, settling in his belly, it rekindled the long-forgotten dreams and ambitions of his youth. I saw his white shirt glowing yellow in the moonlight, flames shooting from his fingertips, like he was a man set on fire. — George Bishop

It's impossible to park on Tremont or even idle there for more than thirty seconds. A platoon of meter maids, imported from the female Hitler Youth shortly after the fall of Berlin, roam the street, at least two to a block, pit bull faces on top of fire hydrant bodies, just waiting for someone stupid enough to stall traffic on their street. — Dennis Lehane

There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age ... I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness - a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade. — Alexander Smith

But a day must come when the fire of youth will be quenched in my veins, when winter will dwell in my heart, when his snow flakes will whiten my locks, and his mists will dim my eyes. Then my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper. — Heinrich Heine

Adolescence and early youth ... the fires are burning fastest, right? And your energy level is highest. It demands ... and rock is screaming type music. — Jim Morrison

A perpetual conflict with natural desires seems to be the lot of our present state. In youth we require something of the tardiness and frigidity of age; and in age we must labour to recall the fire and impetuosity of youth; in youth we must learn to respect, and in age to enjoy. — Lyndon B. Johnson

There is a large gap between being an activist out of the idealism that comes from books, conversations, the fire of youth and being one because you have lived through the depredations that life has thrown at you. — Neel Mukherjee

A move of the Spirit of God is coming to the Catholic Church. The youth in particular will be ignited with a fresh fire of zeal and passion for Christ and His Gospel. A radical company of Believers will arise in the Catholic Church during this move, and they will release a flow of God's love and truth into the nations. — Patricia King

ISCARIOT"

"A box of doves
I placed beside your chest
Liar
A stork of silk
With rubies in it's nest
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

A mare of wood
Elder, elm and oak
Liar
Will keep you fair
If you jest me no joke
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

I'm old and bruised
But my fate is that of youth
Liar
Trickster you
Be a grisly dragon's tooth
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

You gashed the heart of my heart
Like a Portuguese
Witch,
I'd planned for you this land
But you devoured my hand. — Marc Bolan

Oh the glamour of youth! Oh the fire of it, more dazzling than the flames of the burning ship, throwing a magic light on the wide earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently to be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea - and like the flames of the burning ship surrounded by an impenetrable night. — Joseph Conrad

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

Keep flax from fire, and youth from gaming. — Benjamin Franklin

Wine and youth are fire upon fire. — Henry Fielding

Frankly, I don't feel the fire anymore from the youth. I miss my era when motherfuckers were fighting for shit, spitting fire in their lyrics. — Ice-T

A little later Anastasia was sitting before her bedroom fire writing. It has a magic of its own - the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once or twice a year. How the coals glow between the bars, how the red light shimmers on the black-lead bricks, how the posset steams upon the hob! Milk or tea, cocoa or coffee, poor commonplace liquids, are they not transmuted in the alembic of a bedroom fire, till they become nepenthe for a heartache or a philtre for romance? Ah, the romance of it, when youth forestalls to-morrow's conquest, when middle life forgets that yesterday is past for ever, when even querulous old age thinks it may still have its "honour and its toil"! — John Meade Falkner

But, father, there liv'd one who, then, Then - in my boyhood - when their fire Burn'd with a still intenser glow (For passion must, with youth, expire) — Edgar Allan Poe

I am a soldier and accustomed to risking my life every day. I am full of the fire of youth; I cannot act with the restraint of an accomplished diplomat. — Napoleon Bonaparte

His whole being, his whole life was awakened in one instant, as if youth returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent blazed up again. The blindfold suddenly fell from his eyes. God! to ruin the best years of his youth so mercilessly; to destroy, to extinguish the spark of fire that had perhaps flickered in his breast, that perhaps would have developed by now into greatness and beauty, that perhaps would also have elicited tears of amazement and gratitude! — Nikolai Gogol

You may be safe, but I am free.' Take advantage of the freedom that comes with your youth. Inhale life, exhale fire, and embrace the late, sleepless nights, because that's when the magic happens- when everyone else is asleep and you're awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it would be. Make the most of those moments," I said forcefully. "And in the coming years people will tell you that you're too young to change the world. I'm here to tell you, that's fucking bullshit. — Adam Braun

At a time when most of my peers were struggling to find an identity, I knew exactly who I was: the church girl, the girl who always had a place in her youth group family, the girl on fire for God. I'm not sure I can ever calculate the value of that community, that sense of belonging and of being loved. It never even occurred to me that such a fire could be washed out. — Rachel Held Evans

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long. — William Shakespeare

A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience. — Charles Caleb Colton

For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire. — Matthew Arnold

I will write in words of fire.
I will write them on your skin.
I will write about desire.
Write beginnings, write of sin.
You're the book I love the best,
your skin only holds my truth,
you will be a palimpsest
lines of age rewriting youth.
You will not burn upon the pyre.
Or be buried on the shelf.
You're my letter to desire:
And you'll never read yourself.
I will trace each word and comma
As the final dusk descends,
You're my tale of dreams and drama,
Let us find out how it ends. — Neil Gaiman

Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No.
It is immortal as immaculate Truth,
'Tis not a blossom shed as soon as youth,
Drops from the stem of life
for it will grow,
In barren regions, where no waters flow,
Nor rays of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth show,
It is my love's being yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside;
Though fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Though vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare. — Hartley Coleridge

When people look back at their childhood or youth, their wistfulness comes from the memory, not of what their lives had been in those years, but of what life had then promised to be. The expectation of some indefinable splendor, of the unusual, the exciting, the great is an attribute of youth and the process of aging is the process of that expectations' gradual extinction. One does not have to let it happen. But that fire dies for lack of fuel, under the gray weight of disappointments. — Victor Hugo

Anyway, those things would not have lasted long.
The experience of the years shows it to me.
But Destiny arrived in some haste and stopped them.
The beautiful life was brief.
But how potent were the perfumes,
On how splendid a bed we lay,
To what sensual delight we gave our bodies.
An echo of the days of pleasure,
An echo of the days drew near me,
A little of the fire of the youth of both of us,
Again I took in my hands a letter,
And I read and reread till the light was gone.
And melancholy, I came out on the balcony
Came out to change my thoughts at least by looking at
A little of the city that I loved,
A little movement on the street and in the shops.
Translated by Rae Dalven — Constantine P. Cavafy

I have not written my memoirs for those young people who can only save themselves from falling by spending their youth in ignorance, but for those whom experience of life has rendered proof against being seduced, whom living in the fire has transformed into salamanders. — Giacomo Casanova

So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze. — Charles Frazier

They were Archer's second set of children an d paragons of contemporary teenage cynicism. They enjoyed setting fire to the tails of tender thoughts. — Tom Wolfe

Another story was that a certain dissipated youth of the community, going home one Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, from some unhallowed orgy, was pursued by a lamb of fire, with its head cut off and hanging by a strip of skin or flame. — L.M. Montgomery

Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything. — Simone De Beauvoir

You, yesterday's boy,
to whom confusion came:
Listen, lest you forget who you are.
It was not pleasure you fell into. It was joy.
You were called to be bridegroom,
though the bride coming toward you is your shame.
What chose you is the great desire.
Now all flesh bares itself to you.
On pious images pale cheeks
blush with a strange fire.
Your senses uncoil like snakes
awakened by the beat of the tambourine.
Then suddenly you're left all alone
with your body that can't love you
and your will that can't save you.
But now, like a whispering in dark streets,
rumors of God run through your dark blood. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Dave: 'Will you ever be happy Echo?'
Echo: 'I don't know I haven't tried it yet.'
Dave: 'Let's give it a shot together.'
Echo: 'Let's spread fire instead. — Jim Goldberg

Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth. — Plato

No matter what the Fates may bring upon you, there is one thing you can be sure will never falter. I will always love you with the same fire of my youth until the day I am no more. — C.J. Abedi

The future of the world belongs to the youth of the world, and it is from the youth and not from the old that the fire of life will warm and enlighten the world. It is your privilege to breathe the breath of life into the dry bones of many around you. — Tom Mann

Where are the young who must dedicate their roseate hours, their illusions and enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who must generously spill their blood to wash away so much shame, so many crimes, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must be the victim for the holocaust to be acceptable. Where are you, you children who must embody the vigor of life that has fled from your veins, the purity of ideas that has become in our minds and the fire of enthusiasm that has gone out in our hearts? We await you, Oh youth! Come, we await you! — Jose Rizal

The silence of the storm weighs heavily
On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say
Some trivial thing as though to ward away
Mysterious powers, that imminently lie
In wait, with the strong exorcising grace
Of everyday's futility. Desire
Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire,
Defined and hard: If he could kiss her face,
Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand
Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand?
Or is she pedestalled above the touch
Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek
From her that little, that infinitely much?
And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. — Aldous Huxley

We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man. — William Shakespeare

The whole youth-idolatry oh-god-not-another-birthday thing has to be the most sure-fire way to be unhappy about the way things are progressing in your life. — Nat Friedman

We must be laid like a brand in the fire ... if we would gain immortal youth. — Austin O'Malley

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? — Matthew Arnold

To burn the ideal of a great love into the soul of youth in letters of fire - that is to give him a real moral strength. — Ellen Key

Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s. — Talib Kweli

Love is a wild fire that cannot be contained by any mere element known to man. — Cristina Marrero

Age has been the perfect fire extinguisher for flaming youth. — Navjot Singh Sidhu

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

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good," the Golux said, "by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life."
"The firefly's ?" said the minstrel.
"The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire. — James Thurber

We have always needed old people to keep things from going too fast and young people to keep them from going too slow. Youth has fire and age has light and we need both. — Vance Havner

A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and chiseled squint of the veteran. Even his submissions to terror, the very shit with which he paints his thighs under fire is trophy to him; he points it out to his comrades, laughing in the aftercourse of action as if it were a decoration for valour, for it makes him a salt, a veteran, an old hand. — Steven Pressfield

There's only one time in your life when you can burn all the way down and walk away stronger. Waste your youth. That's what it's for. Don't hold back. Love until it hurts. The fire will fade. You're going to die. — Josh Wagner

My youth an unripe plum. Your teeth have left their marks on it. The tooth marks still vibrate. I remember always, remember always. Since I learned how to love you, the door of my soul has been left wide open to the winds of the four directions. Reality calls for change. The fruit of awareness is already ripe, and the door can never be closed again. Fire consumes this century, and mountains and forests bear its mark. The wind howls across my ears, while the whole sky shakes violently in the snowstorm. Winter's wounds lie still, Missing the frozen blade, Restless, tossing and turning in agony all night. — Thich Nhat Hanh

What the hell? Die in a fire, youth. Die in a fire. — Wataru Watari

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

It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions. — Henry James

Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I'm gone,
That, fallen asleep, I
Still may love on.
I feel the flow of
Death's youth-giving flood
To balsam and ether
Transform my blood
I live all the daytime
In faith and in might
And in holy fire
I die every night. — Novalis