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

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

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

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.

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

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