To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  Of  A E Housman.'A  Worcestershire Lad', collected in Forewords and  Afterwords (1973).

It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

-Baldwin,James Arthur
  Notes of a Native Son,'Notes of a Native Son'.

And God spake all these words, saying,Iamthe L thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that isinheaven above, or that isin the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the L thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Thoushalt nottakethename of the L thy God invain; for the L will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Remember thesabbath day, to keep it holy. Six daysthou shalt labour and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the L thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the L made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the L blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long uponthelandwhichtheL thy Godgiveththee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDORDORDORDORDORDORDORDExodus 20:1^17.

Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fatherstempted me, proved me, and saw my work.Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 95:8^11.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them,O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 3:7.

O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew12:34.

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew12:39^40.

When the unclean spirit isgone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew12:43^5.

Verily I say unto you. Thisgeneration shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 24:34^5.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that yeshould shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Peter 2:9.

Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: thou art God from everlasting, and world without end.

-Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 90:1^2.

Under a more heroic Minister, and in a less self-seeking age, it is probablethat England would have preferred the risk, whatever its extent, to the infamy of betraying an ally whom she had enticed into peril. But our Ministry is not heroic; and our generation, though not indifferent to glory, prefers it when it is safe and cheap.

-of Salisbury
  On Palmerston's failure to defend Denmark against Prussia, in the Quarterly Review,  Jul.

Generation X.

-Coupland, Douglas
  From the title of his satiric novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The phrase refers to young people born in the mid-1960s who are in no hurry to'find themselves'.

A new generation does not appear every 30 years. It appears when writers of the same age join in a common revolt against the fathers and when, in the process of adopting a new lifestyle, they find theirownmodels and spokesmen.

-Cowley, Malcolm
Quoted in the NewYork Times, 29 Mar1989.

The poets of each generation seldom sing a new song. They turn themes men always have loved, and sing them in the mode of their times.

-Day, Clarence Shepard
The Crow's Nest,'Humpty-Dumpty and  Adam'.

You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.

-Feynman, Richard P(hillips)
  Explaining his feelings on quantum mechanics. In the International Journal of  Theoretical Physics, vol.21.

My generation of Canadians grew up believing that, if we were very good or very smart, or both, we would someday graduate from Canada.

-Fulford, Robert
  'Notebook', in Saturday Night, Oct.

Like that of leaves is a generation of men.

-Homer   8c
c.700  BC  Iliad, bk.6, l.146 (translated by Martin Hammond).

Like Shelleyand like Baudelaire it may be said of himthat he suffered, in his own person, the neurotic ills of an entire generation.

-Isherwood, Christopher William Bradshaw
  Of  T E Lawrence,'Lawrence of  Arabia'. Collected in Exhumations (1966).

It isrequisite from time to time to remind one generation of the experience which led a former generation to important legislative actions.

-Jevons,William Stanley
  The State in Relation to Labour.