quotations about children
The native and untaught suggestions of inquisitive children do often offer things, that may set a considering man's thoughts on work. And I think there is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We know not what the child may become.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Families with babies, and families without babies, are so sorry for each other.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature.
WALT DISNEY
Deeds Rather Than Words
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH
Of Woman Born
A state, a community, caring first for all its children, providing amply for their spiritual as for their temporal well-being, has organized the primitive Eden.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
When people talk about wanting to "have children someday," what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.
PAUL REISER
Babyhood
Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Setting a good example for your children does nothing but increase their embarrassment.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Quotable Quotes: Wit and Wisdom from the Greatest Minds of Our Time
Children see magic because they look for it.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
She cannot understand how any woman should not want children, to be her companions and to trust in her, love her, reverence her; children whom she may nurse, protect, teach, guide, govern, mold into manhood and womanhood. To have this possession has been her dream ever since with alternate tenderness and severity she ruled her dolls. The hoped-for hour has come. She welcomes it with a gladsome awe. As she prepares to enter the unknown experience of motherhood, her heart is stirred, but more deeply, with all the glad apprehension with which she entered married life as bride. She goes to that mystic gateway which opens into the infinite beyond, and receives into her keeping God's gift of a little child. She wonders at the Father's confidence in her, wonders that He dares to trust so sacred a task to her care. But one child is not enough. She wishes a brood. The Oriental passion of motherhood possesses her. Another child is given to her, a third, a fourth. They cluster about her, sharing with each other and with her their songs and their sorrows, their toils and their sports. The Holy Family has reappeared again. No old master ever painted such a group; no Raphael ever interpreted, no painter could interpret, her holy gladness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.
F. PAUL WILSON
The Tomb
Alligators have the right idea ... they eat their young.
IDA CORWIN
Mildred Pierce
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, Forbes, 1991
Keep thou an open door between thy child's life and thine own.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Closing Door", Mother Stories