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What a cunning
mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds
adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their
first flight are hardly so hovered around.
-- Georges Bernanos
1888-1948, French Novelist,
Political Writer
So much
alarmed that she is quite alarming, All Giggle, Blush, half
Pertness, and half Pout.
-- Lord Byron
1788-1824, British Poet
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
1929-, 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, German Jewish
Refugee, Diarist
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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
1891-1937, Italian Political
Theorist
Boys will be
boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent
girls from being girls.
-- Anthony Hope Hawkins
1863-1933, British Author
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
1902-1983, American Author,
Philosopher
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
1795-1821, British Poet
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