I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959Quotes
Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain, 1876The 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.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940The young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870The 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.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Ah, there are no children nowadays.
—Molière, 1673A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.
—Cicero, 44 BCMost men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688