Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.

Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.

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

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

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

No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.

I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.

The young man must store up, the old man must use.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

The young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind.

A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.

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.