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

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. 

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.