“Youth's the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.”

—  John Gay

Act II, sc. iv, air 22
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Youth's the season made for joys, Love is then our duty." by John Gay?
John Gay photo
John Gay 56
English poet and playwright 1685–1732

Related quotes

Samuel Butler photo

“Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 6

Tanith Lee photo

“The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.”

Tanith Lee book Delusion's Master

Source: Delusion's Master

Kurt Cobain photo

“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Variant: The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

Brian Andreas photo

“Season of Joy:
She asked me when the season of joy was supposed to end & I said I didn't really think there was an exact date, so we left the tree up till June that year.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist
Tryon Edwards photo

“Hell is truth seen too late — duty neglected in its season.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 225.

George Eliot photo

“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Jean Cocteau photo

“The joy of youth is to disobey, but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007) by James Geary, p. 271

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“Life is action, the use of one's powers. As to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Speech to the Bar Association of Boston, in Speeches (1913), p. 85.
1910s

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Bradlaugh makes the most noise, but the Irish Evictions Bill is much the most serious thing. … If the Eviction Act passes, there will not be many more seasons. It is a revolutionary age and the chances are, that even you and I may live to see the final extinction of the great London Season, which was the wonder and admiration of our youth.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lady Chesterfield (27 June 1880), quoted in the Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Vol. II, 1876 to 1881 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), p. 279.

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Voluntaries
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Emerson: Poems

Related topics