Archive

Quotes

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

—Bessie Smith, 1926

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

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

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.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940

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, 1959

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

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

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.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

—Theognis, c. 550 BC

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

—Jean Cocteau, 1947

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

—Molière, 1673

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

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.

—Donald Barthelme, 1964

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

—Herbert Hoover, 1936