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

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

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.

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

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.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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.