The young man must store up, the old man must use.

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.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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.

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