Archive

Quotes

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

—Jane Austen, 1816

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

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.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

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.

—Mark Twain, 1876

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.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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

—Margaret Atwood, 1976

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

—Edward VIII, 1957

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

—Groucho Marx, 1959

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

—Herbert Hoover, 1936

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

—Molière, 1673

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947