Our whole life is but a greater and longer childhood.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.
—Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American Actor, Dancer, Singer
When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood.
—Sam Ewing (b.1949) American Sportsperson
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
—Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) Russian-born American Composer, Musician
I could not point to any need in childhood as strong as that for a father’s protection.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
—Unknown
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
I’d give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer day.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–98) British Anglican Author, Mathematician, Clergyman, Photographer, Logician
Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
Childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons.
—Unknown
Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.
—Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) British Novelist
Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
In childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking out. In memories of childhood, we press our nose to the pane, looking in.
—Robert Brault
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
—Anonymous
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.
—Frederick Seitz (1911–2008) American Physicist
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
—Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.
—Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) Irish-born Literary, Art Critic
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
Childhood is a short season.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actress, Philanthropist
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945) American Novelist
A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
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