Boyhood

“ If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think this description exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortable civilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and custom. ”

“ We stood to each other from boyhood upwards in every possible relation, whether of an educational, warlike, delicate, or social character, which the warm and fitful feelings peculiar to boyhood and youth can produce. ”

“ The more we know of boyhood the more narrow and often selfish do adult ideals of it appear. Something is amiss with the lad of ten who is very good, studious, industrious, thoughtful, altruistic, quiet, polite, respectful, obedient, gentlemanly, orderly, always in good toilet, docile to reason, who turns away from stories that reek with gore, prefers adult companionship to that of his mates, refuses all low associates, speaks standard English, or is as pious and deeply in love with religious services as the typical maiden teacher or the à la mode parent wishes. ”

“ In an unpublished story written fifteen years later, the description of his hero's boyhood has many passages in it which are unmistakably drawn from his own experience. The dreams which mingle with the healthy life of a boy, the first beginnings of thought, of sentiment, of romance, are touched in these passages from knowledge and vivid recollection. ”

“ Gladly would I pass in haste over my lonely boyhood, the sooner to arrive at the happy time when once again a tender, sincere, and noble friendship marked with a gleam of light at once the termination of that period and the beginning of a phase of my youth which was full of the charm of poetry. ”

“ An idolized child, a boy of wondrous promise as of wondrous beauty, a youth completely filling all promises of boyhood, early called to the service of Heaven, and so, somewhat set apart and cherished with a care befitting a sacred vessel, to be guarded from every rude touch lest its perfection be endangered,—thus he had been fitted for the world. ”

“ I have few illusions as to the innocence or the justice or the generosity of boyhood; what boys really admire are grace and effectiveness and readiness. And yet, looking back, one has parted with something, a sort of zest and intensity that one would fain have retained. ”

“ The universality of its appeal to boyhood is shown by its membership which is recruited from all ranks of society—from the slum to the palace. It touches the boy on every side of his manifold interests. ”

“ He that can see no merit in the "Ode on the Distant Prospect of Eton College," can surely never have been a boy. The boy's heart beats in its every line, and yet all the experiences of boyhood are seen and shown in the sober light of those
"Years which bring the philosophic mind." ”

“ Of course, it’s a serious matter, this Wanderlust of boyhood, and the boy who indulges it often comes to irreparable harm. But, after all, what is there like this going to and fro in the world to teach self-reliance and a knowledge of men? All normal boys want to run away; it is rather to their credit when they remain at home. ”

“ Young, he is, of course, and still awaiting the development which life's deeper experiences are to bring, but nevertheless he is not again to taste the joy, the zest, or the enthusiasm which come to careless boyhood. ”

“ In particular he understands the pathos of boyhood, seen not so much, however, through the serious eyes of boys themselves as through the eyes of reminiscent men reflecting upon young joys and griefs that will shortly be left behind and upon little pomps that can never come to anything. ”

“ Does not this rightly imply that between childhood and boyhood is fixed a perceptible gulf, physical, spiritual, psychological, and that in minds in which the powers and tendencies conspicuous in boyhood, and more or less dormant or latent in earlier years, predominate, those of childhood are apt to fade and fall away? ”

“ And can it be called strange that the feelings, the thoughts, and emotions of our youth should come welling up from the long past, or that with the return of boyish emotions, the language and actions of boyhood should be indulged in again? ”

“ Upon the growing boy.”
6 The little child, in his father’s house and under his father’s care, feels the stir of newborn gregarious instincts, and takes his first steps into the larger life of the world. Boyhood proper begins with the rise of impulses which make us citizens and lead us to take care of ourselves; and it ends with the rise of impulses which make us heads of families and lead us to take care of other people. Each step is an enlargement of life. ”

“ At the age of eight or nine, when the child emerges from infancy into early boyhood, he begins gradually and imperfectly to leave behind the characteristics of childhood and, with the development of his mental and physical processes, he acquires the distinguishing traits of the individualistic period. ”

“ The boy has, indeed, learned his lesson, for he has gone out from the Reform School to lead an honest life. All boys are fundamentally alike, and this same appeal to the sympathetic imagination must always remain our chief reliance in combating the predatory and destructive impulses of normal boyhood. ”

“ This little book, which still appeals to the juvenile mind,—a new edition was put out as lately as 1899,—has had a singular charm, not only for boys, but for those grown men who never quite lose the heart of boyhood. ”

“ For my part, I do not much believe in the predilections of boyhood. ”

“ And this again, growing up into childhood, still later urges on youth to fatherhood. Yet the man was not always a father, for he advanced to youth through boyhood, and to boyhood through original infancy. ”

“ Into the contamination of this inferno, into active support of this cruel infamy, many and many a young man is led by the impurity of his boyhood. Such at least is the conclusion of some who know boys best. ”

“ The boy of ten.—When the boy reaches the tenth year he begins to look upon life from the masculine point of view and his father is his natural teacher. If the father is dead or careless the mother should see that her boy is given such information as his developing boyhood and manhood demands. ”

“ At the beginning of the period of childhood for which the Junior Course is intended, approximately nine years of age, there appears to be in the life of the normal boy or girl a real transition as the traits and interests of earlier years give way to those of full fledged boyhood and girlhood. Strange premonitions of impending physical and mental changes now appear, with suggestions of riper years that are rapidly approaching. The physical and mental changes of this period are accompanied by an awakening of social consciousness. ”

“ Wrinkles and limpness might betray them when they returned to the mother's fold at night, but her reproaches had no terror nor any restraint for happy children, who alone know the secrets of their own pleasures and have no remembrance of interference with them. With boy and boy there is a perfect equality; no pretentions are allowed, except those of age. ”

“ They are going to be soldiers, and sailors, and circus riders, and travelers, and all sorts of things. Because they are boys with the enthusiasms of boyhood, they may be anything. All the possibilities of boyhood belong to them. ”

“ The foundation of such companionship is laid in infancy and early boyhood, but it is neglected and frequently lost at puberty, at which time it is most needed. We are quite willing to accept the pleasures of association with the light-hearted frankness and joyousness of infancy, but too often we evade the responsibility of sharing the burdens of the adolescent.
Few fathers know their adolescent sons. It is true that they recognize the exterior boy and are familiar with his patent activities, but they seldom know his inner self and it is his inner self which needs help. ”

“ Give back faint echoes from the historian's page." The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their early years which is not to be found in girlhood. ”

“ The Latin races mature earlier than the Anglo-Saxon; the boy in the tropics reaches puberty more quickly than one in a colder zone; certain abnormalities of physical condition, as well as environment and heredity, conduce to early maturity; and temperamental characteristics contribute, in some degree, to a difference in the time required to traverse the various periods of boyhood. [42] I have known boys of ten who were still infants, and I have in mind a boy friend of sixteen years, with the normal mental development of one of that age, in whom adolescence has not begun. ”

“ Thus becoming familiar with and possessing the pleasures which wealth can furnish a boy, I knew not what a fall I was preparing for myself when the thread of my destiny should lead me back into its narrow and tortuous path. How is any one responsible for such passages in his life which carry him into situations and form in him tastes and propensities that must be relinquished with much sorrow or maintained with peril? ”

“ THE SEA As I look back, boyhood with its griefs and cares vanishes into the proud stateliness of youth. The ambition and the rivalries of the college life—its first boastful importance as knowledge begins to dawn on the wakened mind, and the ripe, and enviable complacency of its senior dignity—all scud over my memory like this morning breeze along the meadows ”

“ BOYHOOD is the longest time in life for a boy. The last term of the school-year is made of decades, not of weeks, and living through them is like waiting for the millennium. ”

“ Perhaps people will scarcely believe me when I tell them what were the dearest, most constant, objects of my reflections during my boyhood, so little did those objects consort with my age and position. Yet, in my opinion, contrast between a man’s actual position and his moral activity constitutes the most reliable sign of his genuineness. ”

“ It is remarkable how early boys begin to trim each other into manly character; they instantly discover and attack any little weakness, and with rough and ready hand or tongue make the weakling or the upstart ashamed of himself. ”

“ It is not always easy to say what circumstances have most influence in shaping the destiny of a boy, but it seems probable that the conversation which has just been detailed, and the discovery that he was quite equal in knowledge to a man who had been a schoolmaster, may have put new ideas into the boy's head, destined to bear fruit later. ”

“ What fun, what glee I experienced at that moment, no one can know, who does not keep in his bosom a fragment of his boyish heart. Creation may please the gods, but it cannot equal the boy's pleasure in destruction, especially by fire. ”

“ Although I was more active and restless than most boys, ever longing, yet with no definite object, I believe I should always have remained in the place of my birth, except for family exigencies, for I had no ambitions, no special talent nor practical faculty. ”

“ O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone,
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last,
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhood's pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done,
Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won. ”

“ Natural History was a subject unknown to me in my boyhood, and such a thing as nature study in the schools was of course unheard of. Our natural history we got unconsciously in the sport at noon time, or on our way to and from school or in our Sunday excursions to the streams and woods. We learned much about the ways of foxes and woodchucks and coons and skunks and squirrels by hunting them. The partridge, too, and the crows, hawks, and owls, and the song birds of the field and orchard, all enter into the farm boy's life. ”

“ But while my sisters petted and pampered me, my mother's graver manners and prayers doubtless saved me from being too selfish and effeminate. Boys, however, owe chiefly to each other their escape from the apron string and the softness of nursery manners. ”

“ The child is a plant that blossoms first at the root underground, like the fringed polygala, and only after a free and natural nurture, again blossoms at the top with the same color, the same modest beauty. Let the child pursue shadows and believe them real; let him discover their unreality and suffer defeats; but he shall not know when he is defeated, for still other shadows shall allure him to the end of his days. The pursuit, not the attainment, is the true joy of living. ”

“ It was a strange sensation to be moving about among men whose legs were as long as I was tall, and, generally, as unnoticed as if I did not exist. Sometimes a kindly old man would look down, put his hand on my head and say: "You'll be a man before you know it;" or another would vary the expression with, "you'll be a man before your mother." Both meant the boy had grown since the last town meeting. ”

“ There are many matters in the recollections of our earliest years so minute that to speak of them is only becoming to second childhood. "The soul discovers great things from casual circumstances", says Porphory. ”

“ At such moments—moments when thought does not shrink from manifestations of will, and the carnal instincts alone constitute the springs of life—I can understand that want of experience (which is a particularly predisposing factor in this connection) might very possibly lead a child, aye, without fear or hesitation, but rather with a smile of curiosity on its face, to set fire to the house in which its parents and brothers and sisters (beings whom it tenderly loves) are lying asleep. ”