Youth
Hans Ras was born in 1926 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as the third son of a family of four children. His father had a wholesale business in confectionery, and all the children had to help in the business. They were all supposed to go to junior high school for their secondary education, as was usual at the time. However, when the eldest was expelled from such a school for precociousness and sent to a higher-grade high school, the others followed in his footsteps.
After Hans Ras passed his school-leaving exams, the Second World War broke out and he went into hiding, while his brothers were sent off into forced labour in Germany. Even at that time he was interested in languages, in particular the Javanese and Arabic language. But his high school certificate did not give him admission to an arts course at a university.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.”
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“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
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