Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others; already they are men.

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.

A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at liberty to refuse ; but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.