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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.