“I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid.”
Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light
Context: I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid. Sometimes it has a triumphant liking for what is now, and the pugnacious broadside of paradox may please it. But there is a degree in innovation which they who have not lived very much cannot attain. And yet who knows if the stern greatness of present events will not have educated and aged the generation which to-day forms humanity's effective frontier? Whatever our hope may be, if we did not place it in youth, where should we place it?
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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935Related quotes
Electra to her mother Clytemnestra, Act 1
The Flies (1943)
Saint Patrick
(385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland
The Confession (c. 452?)
Context: So I hope that I did as I ought, but I do not trust myself as long as I am in this mortal body, for he is strong who strives daily to turn me away from the faith and true holiness to which I aspire until the end of my life for Christ my Lord, but the hostile flesh is always dragging one down to death, that is, to unlawful attractions. And I know in part why I did not lead a perfect life like other believers, but I confess to my Lord and do not blush in his sight, because I am not lying; from the time when I came to know him in my youth, the love of God and fear of him increased in me, and right up until now, by God's favour, I have kept the faith.
Henry James
(1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic
Letter to Hugh Walpole (21 August 1913).
“With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.”
René Char
(1907–1988) 20th-century French poet
"Mute Game", as translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson in Guernica : a magazine of art & politics (June 2007)<!-- Stone Lyre (2010) -->
Context: With my teeth
I have seized life
Upon the knife of my youth.
With my lips today,
With my lips alone…
Variant: I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I was brought up from my earliest youth to believe in the enormous importance of peace.”
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
(1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom
The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: I was brought up from my earliest youth to believe in the enormous importance of peace. I have often heard my father, the late Lord Salisbury, say that, though he did not see how it was possible under the then existing circumstances to avoid wars altogether, yet he had never been able to satisfy himself that they were in principle morally defensible.
Indeed, particularly in the latter part of his life, he made more than one speech in which he expressed the hope that, by some international combination, wars could in the future be prevented. He did not hesitate to express his belief that some such organization as we have since then attempted and erected in the League of Nations might furnish the solution of what he conceived to be the terrific evil of war.
