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

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

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

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