Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes: he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.

— Carroll, Lewis

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

— Chesterton, Gilbert K.

I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys.

— Dickens, Charles

A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.

— Haldane, John B. S.

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.

— Lamb, Charles

Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.

— Miller, Henry

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

— Thackeray, William M.

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

— Twain, Mark