Quotes about boys

„I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.“

—  James A. Michener American author 1907 - 1997

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

„Train whistle blowin',
Makes a sleepy noise;
Underneath their blankets
Go all the girls and boys.
Rockin', rollin', ridin',
Out along the bay,
All bound for Morningtown,
Many miles away.“

—  Malvina Reynolds American folk singer 1900 - 1978

Song Morningtown Ride

„I'm the kind of boy that can fall in love with any girl because I love with the heart, not the eyes.“

—  Niall Horan Irish singer and songwriter 1993

Dare to Dream by One Direction, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422638.Niall_Horan

„The worst thing a boy can do is ignore a girl when she's loving you with all her heart.“

—  Liam Payne English singer and songwriter 1993

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422617.Liam_Payne

„I'd rather be called a boy and play with paper air-planes than be called a man and play with a girl's heart.“

—  Niall Horan Irish singer and songwriter 1993

Dare to Dream by One Direction, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422638.Niall_Horan

„I was the new boy. It was like joining a new class at school where everybody knows everybody else but me.“

—  Ringo Starr British musician, former member of the Beatles 1940

„There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist.“

—  Hermann Hesse, book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The Master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said, "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht — I can see they have already begun."

„I lived in Hollywood and I had all that, the Rolls Royce and the Ferrari and the pad in Beverly Hills. I had the surf board and the Beach Boys and the bishkis and the Neil Diamond and the ramskam and the Jimmy shriffen [ph. ] and the Elvis Presley's best of bestlies and all them guys. The Dean and Martins and the Nancy Sinatras and the cops and sovereigns, "Will you do it to me? I hear you do it good honey" and all that kind of "Will you come up to my house later?" So I went through all that and I seen that was a bigger prison than the one I just got out of and I really didn't care to go back in prison. See, prison doesn't begin and end at the gate. Prison is in the mind. It's locked in one world that's dead and dying, or it's open to a world that's free and alive.“

—  Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934 - 2017

NBC interview (1987)

„I'm not a poster boy for good behavior and recovery in Hollywood, I'm just a guy who knows he has a lot to be grateful for.“

—  Robert Downey Jr. American actor 1965

Quoted in Dotson Rader, "I rose from the ashes" http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2008/edition_04-20-2008/1Robert_Downey_Jr, Parade Magazine (2008-04-20)

„You'll see. I'm as good as any boy. I'm better. - Kel“

—  Tamora Pierce, book First Test

Source: First Test

„Life isn't about how popular you are… What girl or boy you are dating or who you know.Life is about always being true to who you are or what you believe in. Never let anyone convince you that their way is better than your way. In the end all we have is our hearts… and our minds. This is the reason we sing… this is the reason we cry… this is why we live.“

—  Andrew Biersack American singer-songwriter 1990

„Sanguine chuckled. "I like you, boy. You got optimism in these bones. I like you so much that I ain't gonna tell you what I did to poor old Jethro, the first Jethro, may he rest in peace, may they someday find his head.“

—  Derek Landy Irish children's writer 1974

Source: The Maleficent Seven: From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant

„A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.“

—  Robert Frost American poet 1874 - 1963

„The boy had to pay the piper, so they all stay in fear of the neighborhood sniper“

—  Eazy-E American rapper and producer 1963 - 1995

"Neighborhood Sniper", 5150: Home 4 tha Sick (1992).
1990s

„If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than he doust.“

—  William Tyndale Bible translator and agitator from England 1494 - 1536

As quoted in the Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, touching Matters of the Church (Foxe's Book of Martyrs) by John Foxe; variant: I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou doest.
Context: I defie the Pope and all his lawes. If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than he doust.

„I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.“

—  Isaac Newton British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics 1643 - 1727

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27). Compare: "As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore", John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 330

„My boys may charge me with all they want. The main thing is, it helps them. They are not evil and no criminals. They are the products of total war, grown up on the streets of scattered towns without any education! The only thing [they] knew was to handle weapons for the Dream of [the] Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or to die, according to the word: right or wrong—my country!“

—  Joachim Peiper SS officer 1915 - 1976

Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.

„There’s no better feeling than winning when you’re up against it. More than anything I can’t wait to get back in the dressing room and celebrate with the rest of the boys.“

—  Joe Root English cricketer 1990

After England vs. South Africa, quoted on Express.co.uk, "Revealed: What Joe Root said to inspire England to World T20 South Africa win" https://www.express.co.uk/sport/cricket/653851/Joe-Root-Moeen-Ali-World-T20-India-England-South-Africa-cricket-news, March 19, 2016.

„J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…“

—  J.M.W. Turner British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker 1775 - 1851

Source: J.M.W. Turner