Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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

No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.

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

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.

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.

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.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

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