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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.