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  ...never have any intuitions, and am, at best, only subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray."
The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than that which they had touched upon. Phoebe and he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his premature experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart and fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all as bright as on the first day of creation. Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.   So it was with Holgrave. He could talk sagely about the world's old age, but never actually believed what he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon the world--that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable--as a tender stripling, capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming. He had that sense, or inward prophecy, --which a young man had better never have been born...   Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Excerpt from House of the Seven Gables · This quote is about youth · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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