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

I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.

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

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.

Ah, there are no children nowadays.

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.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

Childhood knows what it wants—to leave childhood behind.

No one’s serious at seventeen.

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

Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.

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