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Quotes

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

—Molière, 1673

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.

—Donald Barthelme, 1964

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

—Bessie Smith, 1926

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

—Theognis, c. 550 BC

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

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

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

—Jane Austen, 1816

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

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

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747

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

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

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330