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

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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

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