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The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon;
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.

— William Shakespeare

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Youth

More quotes by William Shakespeare

Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

I am a man,
More sinn'd against than sinning.

King Lear (1605)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It (1599)

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet (1600)

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry IV, Part 2 (1597)

All William Shakespeare quotes →

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I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.

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Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.

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The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Shakespeare (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.