Archive

Quotes

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

—Cicero, 44 BC

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

—Groucho Marx, 1959

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.

—Mark Twain, 1876

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

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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

—Jane Austen, 1816

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

—Margaret Atwood, 1976

The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage. 

—Plato, c. 348 BC

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

—Seneca the Younger, c. 63

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

No one’s serious at seventeen.

—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

—Theognis, c. 550 BC