The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage.
—Plato, c. 348 BCQuotes
Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330There 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, 1876Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.
—Theognis, c. 550 BCA sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816Ah, there are no children nowadays.
—Molière, 1673No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688The 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.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.
—Jean Cocteau, 1947No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
—Herbert Hoover, 1936