YOUTH
Euripides described the hippies of his day, the girls from Sparta, like this: “No Spartan girl could ever live clean even if she wanted. They are always out on the street in scanty outfits, making a great display of naked limbs … Abominable’s the word. It is little wonder Sparta is hardly famous for chaste women.”
Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older people. Children nowadays are tyrants. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room, they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
—Socrates
Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Was Twenty-One
That a man’s habits are mighty hard to change after he is twenty-one.
That a harvest depends on the seeds sown.
That things worthwhile require time, patience, and work.
That you cannot get something for nothing.
The value of absolute truthfulness.
The folly of not taking other people’s advice.
That what my mother wanted me to do was right.
That dad wasn’t an old fogey after all.
More of the helpful and inspiring messages of the Bible.
The greatness of the opportunity and joy of serving a fellowman.
That Jesus Christ wants to be my Savior and Friend.
The error of youth is to believe intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.
—Lyman Bryson
Alexander the Great was a young man when he conquered the world and wept for more worlds to conquer. Napoleon was only thirty-five when he was made Emperor of France. Thomas Jefferson was less than thirty when he was elected to the Senate, which had to suspend its rules in order that the youthful statesman might be seated. Nathan Hale was only twenty-one when he uttered the famous sentence, “All I regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.” William Cullen Bryant was only nineteen when he wrote Thanatopsis. The average age of the Pilgrim fathers was twenty-six. Joan of Arc was only sixteen when she lead France to victory.
Horace Greeley was the champion speller of his school at the age of four.
Evangeline Booth preached her first sermon to a congregation of mops and brooms at five.
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Hush! I’m telling myself a story,” at age six.
Kit Carson was a dead shot with a rifle at age eight.
James Talcott, eminent New York merchant, earned his first dollar in a business deal at age ten.
John Hays Hammond, famous engineer, was panning for gold in Nevada at age eleven.
John Paul Jones was a sailor at seventeen.
Mozart reproduced and played the score of Allegri’s Miserere after hearing it once, at age fourteen.
Hugo Grotius, father of international law, was a Latin scholar at nine, a university student at twelve, a lawyer at fifteen, a historian at twenty, and an international jurist at twenty-one.
McCormick invented the reaper at age twenty-three.
Isaac Newton formulated the law of gravitation at age twenty-four.
Charles Dickens began his Pickwick Papers at twenty-four and wrote Oliver Twist at twenty-five.
Benjamin Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac at twenty-six.
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at age thirty-three.
—Howard Harris
You’re young only once, but you can be immature indefinitely.
—Oscar Wilde
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, fitter for new projects than for settled business.
—Francis Bacon