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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

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

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

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