“Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.”

— P.G. Wodehouse , book The Adventures of Sally

The Adventures of Sally (1922)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes …" by P.G. Wodehouse?

P.G. Wodehouse 302

English author 1881–1975

Related quotes

“Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“At a point of life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Lines On The Transpontine Madness, p. xi

“Love is like the measles; we can't have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.””

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.
"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

“There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

As quoted in “When Writers Turn to Brave New Forms” by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times (24 March 1986)

“One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 116
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Being in Love".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)
Context: Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once... No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart.