Children, no matter how gifted, can't see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime, and telling them that things will be fine when they grow up does no good at all.
Children consume and fracture our lives. Children drag us towards disaster, it's unavoidable. When you see those laughing couples casting off into the sea of matrimony, you say to yourself, they have no idea, poor things, they just have no idea, they're happy. No one tells you anything when you start out. I have an old school pal who's just about to have a child with his new girlfriend. I said to him, "A child, at your age, are you insane?" The ten or dozen good years left to us before we get cancer or a stroke, and you're going to bugger yourself up with some brat?
YASMINA REZA, The God of Carnage
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Most children feel immortal--they have no sense that they're ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that's barely comprehensible.
If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterward makes him a manager of life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
HANNAH ARENDT, The Human Condition
- And where, on earth, dwell hope and truth?
- In childhood's uncorrupted heart;
- Alas! too soon to guileless youth
- The world doth its dark code impart!
ANNE S. BUSHBY, "The Morn of Life"
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD, Electricity on the Farm
A child is an uncut diamond.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
Half the human race are taken out of the world as children. I think that proves God's great fondness for children as children.
REUEN THOMAS, Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Few are fit to train monkeys, yet not one of us but thinks himself competent to bring up children.
ABRAHAM MILLER, Unmoral Maxims
A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is better to have only one son endowed with good qualities than a hundred devoid of them. For the moon though one, dispels the darkness, which the stars, though numerous, do not.
CHANAKYA, Vridda-Chanakya
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That’s not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.
CHINUA ACHEBE, Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 2, 2008
Children are taught to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches children economy, arrogance, or submission. They are also encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
If we would amend the world, we should mend our selves; and teach our children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
Children are natural mimics. They act like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners.
GRENVILLE KLEISER, Dictionary of Proverbs
Our children are the only possessions we can take to heaven.
