Archive

Quotes

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

—Edward VIII, 1957

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

—Theognis, c. 550 BC

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

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

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

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

—Jane Austen, 1816

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

—Lord Byron, 1813

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

—Molière, 1673

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

—Bessie Smith, 1926

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

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

—Plato, c. 348 BC

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

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

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747