"They seem so eager and so confident, all these boys--it's touching.

But of course youth doesn't know it's touching." Amberson coughed.

"No, it doesn't seem to take itself as pathetic, precisely! Eugene and I were just speaking of something like that.
Do you know what I think whenever I see these smooth, triumphal young faces?
I always think: 'Oh, how you're going to catch it'!" "George!" "Oh, yes," he said.

"Life's most ingenious: it's got a special walloping for every mother's son of 'em!" "Maybe," said Isabel, troubled--"maybe some of the mothers can take the walloping for them." "Not one!" her brother assured her, with emphasis.

"Not any more than she can take on her own face the lines that are bound to come on her son's.