Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God

by Will Durant

Our children bring us up by showing us, through imitation, what we really are.

Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.

Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.

Youth is the transition from play to work, from dependence on the family to dependence on one’s self.

Youth is as confident and improvident as a god. It loves excitement and adventure more than food. It loves the superlative, the exaggerated, the limitless, because it has abounding energy and frets to liberate its strength. It loves new and dangerous things; a man is as young as the risks he takes.