It's both ludicrous and embarrassing to recall one's youth.

It's terrible to be young. It's terrible.

The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.

How I pity those whose childhood has been unhappy! to them one of the sweetest springs of feeling has been utterly denied, the most green and beautiful part of life laid waste.

To regret your sins of commission as much as your sins of omission is to prove yourself a most unworthy sinner.

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures.

I loathe that I did love, In youth that I thought sweet;
As time requires, for my behove, Methinks they are not meet.
* * *
For age with stealing steps Hath clawed me with his clutch,
And lusty life away she leaps, As there had been none such.

A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and the chiseled squint of the vetern.

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult — in any way — something in your childhood dies.

I nothing had, and yet enough for youth — Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion, — O, give me back my youth again!

How absurd to call youth the time of happiness–youth, the time of greatest vulnerability!

Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.