No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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

Youth 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.

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.

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.