quotations about children
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner
Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
A child is a priest of the ordinary, fulfilling a sacred office that absolutely no one else can fill. The simplest gesture, the ephemeral movement, the commonest object all become precious beyond words when touched, noticed, lived by one's own dear child.
MIKE MASON
The Mystery of Children
Every child lives up to the expectation you have for him.
KEVIN LEMAN
Have a New Kid by Friday
The pressures on children today were not good, it seemed to him. A frankness about sex and drugs, explicit newspapers, four-letter words tossed from the television. A different type of child, more knowing but less loveable, was being created.
GUY BELLAMY
The Man Who Won
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
[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
We can't control everything thing our kids do. Sooner or later they're just gonna do what they're gonna do. They're like people that way.
ROSEANNE BARR
"Bird is the Word", Roseanne
Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, May 17, 2014
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children." And you say "Why?" And they say, "Because a child is so truthful. That's what I love about 'em...they tell the truth." That's a lie! I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
BILL COSBY
Bill Cosby: Himself
I wasn't really that informed about the two-year-old. Oh, I'd read about them, and occasionally I'd see documentaries on the Discovery Channel showing two-year-olds in the wild, where they belong.
RAY ROMANO
Everything and a Kite
Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
A child's voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who've forgotten how to listen.
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.
MAXIM GORKY
"Creatures that Once were Men"
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
CHARLES DICKENS
Master Humphrey's Clock
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
Children ... are unripe and imperfect; their virtues, therefore, are to be considered not merely as relative to their actual state, but principally in reference to that maturity and perfection to which nature has destined them.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
She not only loves her children, she respects them. They have wills, tastes, thoughts, judgments of their own, and this is as she wishes it to be. She distinguishes clearly between counsel and command: command must be obeyed; counsel may be disregarded without rebuke and without loss of favor.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"There Was a Little Girl"