The unthinking gaiety of boyhood, its light sports, its airy gladness, its springy motions, the "tears forgot as soon as shed," the "sunshine of the breast" of that delightful period—are contrasted with the still and often sombre reflection, the grave joys, the carking cares, the stern concentred passions, the serious pastimes, the spare but sullen and burning tears, the sad smiles of manhood; and contrasted by one who is realising both with equal vividness and intensity—because he is in age a man, and in memory and imagination an Eton schoolboy still.
— from Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes by Thomas Gray

I fear ’tis growing old; but I literally seem to have murdered a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me.
— from Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters by Horace Walpole