Young Man Quotes - Page 17

• He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty.

  Edith Wharton

  Girl, Adventure, Men

  Edith Wharton (2016). “The Age of Innocence: American Literature”, p.144, VM eBooks

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• The romantic chivalric tradition takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Stars, Taken, Eye

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• I liked that young man, did not you? There was something particularly pleasing about his manners, which I thought very easy and frank. He has an air of honest manliness, too, which, in these days of fribbles and counter-coxcombs, I own I find refreshing!

  Georgette Heyer

  Men, Air, Honest

  Georgette Heyer (1955). “Bath Tangle”, London : Heinemann

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• I always loved twilight: it was the only time of day I had the feeling that something important could happen. All things were more beautiful bathed in twilight, all streets, all squares, and all the people walking through them; I even had the feeling that I was a handsome young man, and I liked looking at myself in the mirror, watching myself in the shop windows as I strode along, and even when I touched my face, I felt no wrinkles at my mouth or forehead.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Beautiful, Twilight, Men

  Bohumil Hrabal (1992). “Too Loud a Solitude”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be lumped together…. In a few decades, people will see you and the people you despise as one and the same, a single entity.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, What Matters, Talking

  Yukio Mishima (1990). “Spring Snow”, Vintage

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• On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, July, Bridges

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2006). “Crime and Punishment”, p.1, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naïveté and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency--and without questions.

  Jim Butcher

  Men, Skills, Age

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Academ's Fury”, p.58, Penguin

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• Sir. My lord. Master Roydon." The young man blurted out most available titles except for "Your Majesty" and "Prince of Darkness." These were implied nonetheless.

  Deborah Harkness

  Men, Darkness, Titles

  Deborah Harkness (2014). “All Souls Trilogy”, p.527, Penguin

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• Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo.

  Paul Goodman

  Children, Father, Moving

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.144, New York Review of Books

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• Much has been said about Robert, and more will be added. Young men will adopt his gait. Young girls will wear white dresses and mourn his curls. He will be condemned and adored. His excesses damned or romanticized. In the end, truth will be found in his work, the corporeal body of the artist. It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to him.

  Patti Smith

  Girl, Art, Fall

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.9, A&C Black

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• Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man - all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died - what is there to be afraid of? It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I'm afraid of being rushed.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Children, Boys, Men

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, James P. White (1989). “Where Joy Resides: An Isherwood Reader”, Vintage

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• What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?

  Neil Gaiman

  Ignorance, Men, Mind

  Neil Gaiman (2010). “Neverwhere”, p.84, Hachette UK

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• There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

  Jane Austen

  Pride, Men, Two

  Jane Austen (2006). “8 Books in 1: Jane Austen's Complete Novels. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady Susan, and Love an”, p.211, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.

  Jack Kerouac

  Lonely, Men, Doe

  Jack Kerouac (2000). “Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings”, p.92, Penguin

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• He is also handsome," replied Elizabeth, "which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.

  Jane Austen

  Character, Men, Handsome

  Jane Austen (2016). “Pride and Prejudice (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere — "Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

  C. S. Lewis

  Atheist, Reading, Men

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• She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Nice, Men, Smell

  Flannery O'Connor (2016). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, p.120, Faber & Faber

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• She was sleeping in a quiet bedroom beside her brother, separated only by glass and sand from the young man she loved, a young man who loved her back

  Nicholas Sparks

  Brother, Sleep, Men

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• Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Games, Play

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• A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.

  John Edward Williams

  War, Men, People

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• There is something powerfully beguiling about the excited eyes of a young woman. They can pull all manner of nonsense out of a foolish young man, and I was no exception to this rule.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Eye, Men, Excited

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• And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

  Virginia Woolf

  Horse, Men, Hair

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.779, Wordsworth Editions

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• Though most expect young men to be fools, I've noticed that just a little bit of age can make a man far more foolish than he was as a child.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Children, Men, Age

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Mistborn Trilogy”, p.416, Macmillan

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• It was a perfectly normal May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide. The young man looked at her in surprise. "It's all right, you little gray mouse," he said laughing rather pityingly. "I only want to buy you a drink. Don't look so scared.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Men, Perfectly Normal, Blue

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• Were you lying?" "I never lie," he said piously. "About what?" "The sand, the snake." For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Lying, Men, Snakes

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