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.

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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

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

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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