Book 1:
Reason alone teaches us to know good and bad. . . . Before the age of reason we do good and bad without knowing it, and there is no morality in our actions. . . . A child wants to upset everything he sees; he smashes, breaks everything he can reach.
Book 4:
We hold that no child who dies before the age of reason will be deprived of eternal happiness. . . . The whole difference I see here between you and me is that you claim that children have this capacity [i.e., to recognize the divinity] at seven, and I do not even accord it to them at fifteen.
He was annoyed at having to get out to open the green gates, and then it was on down past the olive groves and the vineyards to the villa, in which I was hostaged for eleven days.
She pulled through with the boy till he was confirmed; but then she told him that she could not feed him any longer; he would have to go out and earn his own bread.
