No one’s serious at seventeen.

The young man must store up, the old man must use.

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

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.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

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

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

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.

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

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.

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