Eternal youth is the concept of human physical immortality free of aging. The youth referred to is usually meant to be in contrast to the depredations of aging, rather than a specific age of the human lifespan.
So far, achieving eternal youth remains beyond the capabilities of science. However, much research is currently being conducted in the sciences of genetics which may allow manipulation of the aging process at some time in the future.
Eternal youth is common in mythology, and it remains a popular theme in fiction.
Famous quotes containing the words eternal and/or youth:
“Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that’s precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows!... eternal fountain of our feelings!—’tis here I trace thee—and this is thy divinity which stirs within me ...—all comes from thee, great—great SENSORIUM of the world!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a barroom around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarked seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)