Oscar Wilde Quotes on Youth (24 Quotes)

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world.

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older, they know it

The condition of perfection is idleness the aim of perfection is youth.

You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

How sad it is I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old For this--for this--I would give everything Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

What a fuss people make about fidelity Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not old men want to be faithless, and cannot that is all one can say.

Youth There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.

Those things which the English public never forgives - youth, power and enthusiasm.

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down.... The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost...

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.