Skip to main content

Aging & Wisdom Quote by Natalie Clifford Barney

"Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth"

About this Quote

Barney snaps the usual timeline in half and dares you to live without its comforting math. By declaring youth "not a question of years", she rejects the idea that vitality can be tallied like rings on a tree. The provocation is the second clause: "one is young or old from birth". Its sting comes from treating age not as a biography but as a temperament, almost a moral orientation. Youth becomes a posture toward risk, desire, curiosity; oldness becomes a reflex of caution, convention, and premature surrender. The line is less about birthdays than about compliance.

The subtext is pure Barney: an aristocratic renegade who built a life around salon culture, queer love, and aesthetic rebellion in a world eager to sort women into diminishing categories. In the early 20th century, "youth" for women was currency and trap at once, a brief social permission slip followed by dwindling options. Barney flips that script by implying that what society calls "maturity" often amounts to training people out of their appetites. If you are "old from birth", you were never seduced by possibility; if you are "young from birth", you may never fully accept the terms.

It also reads as a subtle defense of chosen kinship and outsiderhood: if youth is innate, then the unconventional aren't immature; they're consistent. The sentence works because it refuses sentimentality. It's an aphorism with teeth, flattering no one, especially not those who hide behind age as an excuse for deadened ambition.

Quote Details

TopicYouth
Source
Later attribution: The Book of Positive Quotations (Steve Deger, Leslie Ann Gibson, 2024) modern compilationISBN: 9781493089192 · ID: WuYPEQAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Youth is not a question of years : one is young or old from birth . -Natalie Clifford Barney When I was fourteen , I was the old- est I ever was . . . . I've been getting younger ever since . ... -Shirley Temple Black A child's world is ...
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Barney, Natalie Clifford. (2026, February 7). Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/youth-is-not-a-question-of-years-one-is-young-or-130120/

Chicago Style
Barney, Natalie Clifford. "Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth." FixQuotes. February 7, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/youth-is-not-a-question-of-years-one-is-young-or-130120/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth." FixQuotes, 7 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/youth-is-not-a-question-of-years-one-is-young-or-130120/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Natalie Add to List
Youth is a State of Mind: Young or Old from Birth
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 - February 2, 1972) was a Author from USA.

17 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Pablo Picasso, Artist
Pablo Picasso
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Rabindranath Tagore, Poet
Rabindranath Tagore
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Writer
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Novelist
Sigmund Freud, Psychologist
Sigmund Freud