The big
mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen
and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe that they
like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like
women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.
Jules Feiffer, American Cartoonist
They mustn't know my despair, I can't let them see the wounds which
they have caused, I couldn't bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted
jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk,
everyone thinks I'm showing off; when I'm silent they think I'm
ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if
I'm tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid,
cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.
Anne Frank 1929-1945
In the life of children there are two very clear-cut phases, before
and after puberty. Before puberty the child's personality has not
yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire
specific habits of order, discipline, and work: after puberty the
personality develops impetuously and all extraneous intervention
becomes odious, tyrannical, insufferable. Now it so happens that
parents feel the responsibility towards their children precisely
during this second period, when it is too late: then of course the
stick and violence enter the scene and yield very few results indeed.
Why not instead take an interest in the child during the first period?
Antonio Gramsci
Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could
prevent girls from being girls.
Anthony Hope Hawkins
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence,
by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities,
and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres
of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book
learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
Eric Hoffer
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which
the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life
uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.
John Keats
Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission
ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the
glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers,
and by their suffrage they stand or fall.
Max Lerner - American Author
Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones run in packs like
the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating
liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.
Camille Paglia
When you
are seventeen you aren't really serious.
Arthur Rimbaud, French Poet
I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that
youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between
but getting wenches with child, wronging the anciently, stealing,
fighting.
William Shakespeare
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