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

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.