Boyhood Quotes

• Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Son, Men, Boys

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• Between the innocence of boyhood and the dignity of manhood, we find a delightful creature called a boy....A boy is truth with dirt on its face, beauty with a cut on its finger, wisdom with bubble gum in its hair and the hope of the future with a frog in its pocket.

  Alan Beck

  Cutting, Boys, Hair

  7 Copy quote

• In the lost boyhood of Judas, Christ was betrayed.

  George William Russell

  Childhood, Betrayed, Christ

  'Germinal' (1931)

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• I'm hardly digging trenches for a living. I'm getting to tap into my boyhood fantasies of being a larger-than-life character.

  Joel Edgerton

  Character, Digging, Larger Than Life

  "Joel Edgerton’s flirtation with fame" by Luke Davies, www.themonthly.com.au. June 2013.

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• The priceless treasure of boyhood is his endless enthusiasm, his high store of idealism, his affections and his hopes. When we preserve these, we have made men. We have made citizens and we have made Americans.

  Herbert Hoover

  Men, Citizens, Treasure

  Herbert Hoover (1951). “Addresses Upon the American Road, 1948-1950”

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• Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Life, Men, Done

  P. G. Wodehouse (2009). “Uneasy Money: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.236, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• All my boyhood, all I ever wanted was to be loved.

  Norman Wisdom

  Wanted

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Oh, for boyhood's painless play, sleep that wakes in laughing day, health that mocks the doctor's rules, knowledge never learned of schools.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Sleep, School, Doctors

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1873). “The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier”, p.196

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• I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Experience, Today

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.47, Courier Corporation

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• Boyhood is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium.

  Booth Tarkington

  School, Boys, Years

  Newton Booth Tarkington (2015). “Penrod”, p.102, Booklassic

  27 Copy quote

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• Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

  Diane Setterfield

  School, Boys, Uniforms

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• For my part, I do not much believe in the predilections of boyhood.

  James Payn

  Believe

  James Payn (1882). “Sammlung”

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• If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Time, Ambition

  11 Copy quote

• I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.

  George Takei

  People, Wire, Life Is

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  83 Copy quote

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• The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Farewell, Atlanta, Imagination

  James Weldon Johnson (2012). “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Ever since boyhood I've made a religion of keeping in shape by regular, conscientious exercise.

  Gene Tunney

  Sports, Exercise, Religion

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• Somewhere in my wildest childhood I must have done something right. Being able to make a boyhood dream come true is one thing, but to have a kid come along and thrill his dad like Brett Hull has thrilled me over his career is too much for one guy to handle.

  Bobby Hull

  Sports, Dream, Dad

  7 Copy quote

• My boyhood life in New York City has impressed me with the popular ignorance and also with the great need of something better than local lore and weather proverbs.

  Cleveland Abbe

  New York, Ignorance, Weather

  7 Copy quote

• I want to be with my best friend. My best friend, my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

  John Lennon

  Relationship, Wife, My Best Friend

  "Lennon On Lennon: Conversations With John Lennon".

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• No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Learning, Knowledge

  Henry David Thoreau, Linda Corrente (1984). “Henry David Thoreau's Walden”, Barrons Educational Series Incorporated

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• I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.

  Kary Mullis

  Writing, Kids, Black

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• I suppose you could sum up the religious aspects of my boyhood by saying it was a time of life when I was taught the difference between right and wrong as it specifically applied to Catholicism.

  Robert Vaughn

  Religious, Differences, Catholic

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• Jim Grimsley's unflinching self-examination of his own boyhood racial prejudices during the era of school desegregation is one of the most compelling memoirs of recent years. Vivid, precise, and utterly honest, How I Shed My Skin is a time-machine of sorts, a reminder that our past is every bit as complex as our present, and that broad cultural changes are often intimate, personal, and idiosyncratic.

  Dinty W. Moore

  School, Past, Self

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• Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts of grammar that are infinitely prolix, perplexed and obscure.

  John Amos Comenius

  Years, Obscure, Grammar

  27 Copy quote

• Boyhood proves that there's still good roles for women over 40, as long as you get hired when you're under 40.

  Tina Fey

  Long, Roles, Prove

  7 Copy quote