"Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unencumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak and hard to move."
Letter to Isaac Smith, Jr. 
Levin, Phyllis Lee. <u>Abigail Adams: A Biography.</u>  New York: St. Martinâ€™s Press, 2001, p. 6. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=x9NKGh53nGgC"> Link to Google Books </a>.