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

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.

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

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

The 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.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

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