Nathaniel Hawthorne on youth

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Mark Twain1835–1910“Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington”, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), ed. John Paul

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Mark Twain1835–1910Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain Project edition, Volume 1 (2010), p. 210