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

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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

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

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

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

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

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

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