Childhood

Age does not make us childish, as they say. It only finds us true children still.

His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today.

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day.

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?

Two lads that thought there was no more behind But such a day tomorrow as today, And to be boy eternal.

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ the sun, And bleat the one at the other: what we chang’d Was innocence for innocence.

My salad days, When I was green in judgment.

When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain; A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. 40

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age.

Old men are children for a second time.

An honest man is always a child.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

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