Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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.

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.