Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage. 

A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.

Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children. 

Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.