"Certainly childhood is the happiest time in one's life.
If it could only last for ever!" "Are you sure you mean what you say ?" replied Malcolm in a grave, argumentative tone.

"Remember it is the age of ignorance as well as innocence; with knowledge comes responsibility and the pains and penalties of life, nevertheless few of us desire to remain children." "I am one of the few," she returned curtly.
"I cannot believe that," and Malcolm smiled; "but I grant you that the best and highest natures have some-thing of the child in them.

As Mencius says, 'The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart.'" Miss Jacobi looked impressed.
"That is well said," she replied softly.

"Mr.Herrick, I think your friend Mr.Templeton is rather like that: he is so young and fresh, it is delightful to listen to him.

He is two-and-twenty, is he not?
and he is such a boy." She laughed an odd, constrained little laugh as she said this, and added in a curious undertone, "And I am only nine-and-twenty, and I feel as though I were seventy.