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

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.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

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

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

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

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.