“A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.”

— William McFee

Harbours of Memory (1921), p. 236
Paraphrased variant: A man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Feb. 6, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on." by William McFee?

William McFee19

American writer 1881–1966

Related quotes

“Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.”

Yukio Mishima book After the Banquet

Source: After the Banquet

“Young people must break machines to learn how to use them; get another made!”

Henry Cavendish

when he was told that one of his valuable instruments was broken by a young man, as quoted in Biographical Memoir of Henry Cavendish, by Georges Cuvier, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1828), p. 222.

“Sometimes I start with very little and it grows. Sometimes it grows up to a thing, and doesn’t continue further or it does continue further, which I call vistaar, or expansion, or developing the same idea into space or intensity. There’s no hard or fast rule you see. It happens.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Culture:S.H. Raza Comes in Full Circle

“A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 4 : On Old Age

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

“The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

"Departure"
Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Context: The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.