quotations about children
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, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
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
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Nurse's Song", Songs of Innocence
Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.
STEPHANIE MARTSON
The Magic of Encouragement
I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!
HOMER SIMPSON
"The Wandering Juvie", The Simpsons
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
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
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
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
CHARLES LAMB
"A Bachelor's Complaint", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all well and put them to bed.
ANONYMOUS
nursery rhyme
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
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.
JOHN SAUL
Shadows
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"A Defence of Baby-Worship,", The Defendant
Our children are the only possessions we can take to heaven.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
There is more in the education of children than the everlasting iteration of the word "don't!"
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Children are illuminated text-books, breviaries of doctrine, living bodies of divinity, open always and inviting their elders to peruse the characters inscribed on the lovely leaves.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education