quotations about children
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
Have you never, when waves were breaking, watched children at sport on the beach,
With their little feet tempting the foam-fringe, till with stronger and further reach
Than they dreamed of, a billow comes bursting, how they turn and scamper and screech!
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology"
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
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
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
Children are a comfort to men because the youngsters cannot contradict them.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Madame Louise Colet, Dec. 11, 1852
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD
Electricity on the Farm
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
[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
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
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
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
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
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
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"
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long