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

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.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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.