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

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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