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.

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

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

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.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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.

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

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

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