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No young man believes he shall ever die.
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“No young man believes he shall ever die.”

William Hazlitt

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Source
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth
Date
1827
Meaning

Meaning of “No young man believes he shall ever die.”

Hazlitt describes the psychological distance of mortality in youth: death can be known abstractly while still feeling too remote to shape one’s immediate sense of life.

Source context

Where does it come from?

‘On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,’ opening of the essay first published unsigned in The Monthly Magazine, March 1827, represented in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Volume XII, Project Gutenberg #72206. ‘No young man believes he shall ever die’ opens Hazlitt's rhetorical account of youth's felt distance from mortality; it is historical essay reflection, not a literal claim about every young person.

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LifeLife Is ShortShortTimeBeliefDeathPerspective
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We make the coming age our own.
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“We make the coming age our own.”

William Hazlitt · On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth · 1827
Meaning & context

Youth is portrayed as imaginatively possessing the future before experience has imposed clear limits, turning coming time into a field of possibility rather than scarcity.

Source details

On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, first published March 1827. The sentence belongs to Hazlitt’s account of expansive youthful expectation and should not be treated as a literal claim of control over the future.

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Without life there can be no action
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“Without life there can be no action”

William Hazlitt · On the Love of Life · 1815
Meaning & context

The excerpt connects finite existence with agency: action, pursuit and intention require continued life, which helps explain why future time matters to an active person.

Source details

The Round Table, No. 1, “On the Love of Life,” January 15, 1815. The phrase occurs inside Hazlitt’s broader argument that passions and projects strengthen attachment to life.

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Time is a great deal more than money.
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“Time is a great deal more than money.”

Arnold Bennett · How to Live on 24 Hours a Day · 1908
Meaning & context

Bennett treats time as the more fundamental resource because money can be gained or lost within time, whereas each passing hour is the fixed medium in which every other activity occurs.

Source details

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, opening discussion of the daily allotment of time. The represented public-domain Project Gutenberg text is #2274; the line is conduct-of-life rhetoric, not a literal economic equivalence.

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Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.
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“Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.”

Richard Jefferies · The Story of My Heart · 1883
Meaning & context

The repeated ‘now’ intensifies Jefferies’s claim that spiritual significance is experienced in the present rather than postponed to a distant future or afterlife.

Source details

The Story of My Heart (1883), Chapter III, Project Gutenberg #2317. The inherited Chapter I note is corrected: ‘Now is eternity; now is the immortal life’ immediately follows the same tumulus passage in which Jefferies treats the present moment as continuous eternity. This is his personal metaphysical/spiritual intuition, not empirical evidence for immortality, neuroscience or clinical guidance.

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There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
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“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

George Santayana · Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies · 1922
Meaning & context

Mortality cannot be eliminated, so the practical answer is to make conscious use of the finite span between beginning and end.

Source details

Soliloquies in England, “War Shrines”; the sentence follows a contrast between strained worldliness and a more festive acceptance of life.

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The gap of time since I had seen him last had made no impression on me
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“The gap of time since I had seen him last had made no impression on me”

Richard Jefferies · Field and Hedgerow · 1889
Meaning & context

Jefferies describes memory resisting elapsed time: the remembered person remains vivid even though years have passed and death has created an irreversible break in the present.

Source details

Field and Hedgerow; Project Gutenberg #7030. The sentence occurs in a recollection of John Brown after his death and is kept in that personal-memory context rather than generalized into abstract grief advice.

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