Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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