“Death is a stage in human progress, to be passed as we would pass from childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everlasting nature.”

“Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.”

“In short, enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.”
Denique isto bono utare, dum adsit, cum absit, ne requiras: nisi forte adulescentes pueritiam, paulum aetate progressi adulescentiam debent requirere. cursus est certus aetatis et una via naturae eaque simplex, suaque cuique parti aetatis tempestivitas est data, ut et infirmitas puerorum et ferocitas iuvenum et gravitas iam constantis aetatis et senectutis maturitas naturale quiddam habet, quod suo tempore percipi debeat.

“(…) Anything that implies a continuity, a sequence, a passing from stage to stage cannot be real. There is no progress in reality; it is final, perfect, unrelated.”

“Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.”

“As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.”

“For the youth, the indignation of most things will just surge as each birthday passes.”

“If we pass from physical nature to the moral world, here we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influence of spontaneity and habit.”

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

“Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific — call them by what names you will — yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland — a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossom of youth. To live was then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing.”