This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Man with his burning soul has but an hour of breath to build a ship of Truth in which his soul may sail, sail on the sea of death; for death takes toll of beauty, courage, youth, of all but Truth." - John Masefield
"In extreme youth, in our most humiliating sorrow, we think we are alone. When we are older we find that others have suffered too." - Suzanne Moarny
"The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government." - Thomas Paine
"The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded upon a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older." - Edward John Phelps
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day." - William Wordsworth
"The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service." - Albert Einstein
"If youth only knew, if age only could." - Henri Estienne, aka Henricus Stephanus
"In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families - and even our politicians!" - Adlai Ewing Stevenson
"In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families - and even our politicians!" -
"In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families - and even our politicians!" -
"Instruction in youth is like engraving in stones." - African Proverbs
"The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The deepest definition of youth is, life as yet untouched by tragedy." - Alfred North Whitehead
"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." - Aristotle NULL
"Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age." - Aristotle NULL
"Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it." - Aristotle NULL
"Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope." - Aristotle NULL
"Lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Every day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Memory tempers prosperity, consoles adversity, cautions youth, and delights old age." - Author Unknown NULL
"Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul. Take time to think, it is the source of power. Take time to play, it is the source of perpetual youth. Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom. Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege. Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness. Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish. Take time to work, it is the price of success." - Author Unknown NULL
"Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again." - Author Unknown NULL
"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"The disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth; let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not despair." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain." - Charles Caleb Colton
"When young, we trust ourselves too much and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years." - Charlotte Brontë
"A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?" - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls. When wrought in earliest youth, they lie in the memory of age like the coral islands, green and sunny, amidst the melancholy waste of ocean." - David Thomas
"The passions of youth are scarcely worse foes to happiness than the apathy of old age." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We eventually lose everything we have, yet what ultimately matters can never be lost. Our houses, cars, jobs, and money, our youth and even our loved ones, are just on loan to us… If life is a school, loss is a major part of the curriculum… Our reality here is not permanent; neither is our ownership of anything. Everything is temporary. Trying to find permanence is impossible, and we ultimately learn that there is no safety in trying to “keep” everything. And there is no safety in trying to prevent loss… Loss is often an initiation into adulthood… Loss is a right of passage." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age." - English Proverbs
"Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old." - Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright
"Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances." - Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright
"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." - Franz Kafka
"Age generally makes men more tolerant; youth is always discontented. The tolerance of age is the result of the ripeness of a judgment which, not merely as the result of indifference, is satisfied even with what is inferior, but, more deeply taught by the grave experience of life, has been led to perceive the substantial, sold worth of the object in question. The insight then to which - in contradistinction fro those ideals - philosophy is to lead us, is, that the real world is as it ought to be, that the truly good, the universal divine reason, is not a mere abstraction, but a vital principle capable of realizing itself." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel