Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
Children, taught either years beneath their intelligence or miles wide of relevance to it, or both: their intelligence becomes hopelessly bewildered, drawn off its centers, bored, or atrophied.
—James Agee (1909–55) American Journalist, Poet, Screenwriter, Film Critic
Of nineteen out of twenty things in children, take no special notice; but if, as to the twentieth, you give a direction or command, see that you are obeyed.
—Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author
Little girl’s definition of conscience: “Something that makes you tell your mother before your brother or sister does.”
—Unknown
A rich child often sits in a poor mother’s lap.
—Danish Proverb
When I see children, I see the face of God. That’s why I love them so much. That’s what I see.
—Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American Singer-Songwriter
You can’t cheat kids. If you cheat them when they’re children they’ll make you pay when they’re sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that’s finally when they’re old enough to stand up to you and say, ‘What a hypocrite you’ve been all this time. You’ve never given me what I really wanted, which is you’.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) American Children’s Author, Educator
All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.
—Marie Curie (1867–1934) Polish-born French Physicist, Chemist
Kids use to ask where they came from, now they tell you where to go.
—Indian Proverb
What children hear at home soon flies abroad.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present—which seldom happens to us.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to lose time in order to gain it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
What I call “doing the dishes” is the practice of loving the task in front of you. Your inner voice guides you all day long to do simple things such as brush your teeth, drive to work, call your friend, or do the dishes. Even though it’s just another story, it’s a very short story, and when you follow the direction of the voice, the story ends. We are really alive when we live as simply as that—open, waiting, trusting, and loving to do what appears in front of us now…What we need to do unfolds before us, always—doing the dishes, paying the bills, picking up the children’s socks, brushing our teeth. We never receive more than we can handle, and there is always just one thing to do. Whether you have ten dollars or ten million dollars, life never gets more difficult than that.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
Children show me in their playful smiles the divine in everyone. This simple goodness shines straight from their hearts and only asks to be lived.
—Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American Singer-Songwriter
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Children need models rather than critics.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
The wildest colts make the best horses.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
It takes three to make a child.
—e. e. cummings (1894–1962) American Poet, Writer, Painter
The distinctive character of a child is to always live in the tangible present.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
Babies are unreasonable; they expect far too much of existence. Each new generation that comes takes one look at the world and thinks wildly, “Is this all they’ve done to it?” and bursts into tears.
—Clarence Day (1874–1935) American Author, Humorist
A fairly bright boy is far more intelligent and far better company than the average adult.
—J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) British Scientist, Geneticist
Only two kids enjoy high school. One is the captain of the football team. The other is his girlfriend.
—Ask Ann Landers (1918–2002) American Advice Columnist (Ruth Crowley/Eppie Lederer)
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Everyone knows that by far the happiest and universally enjoyable age of man is the first. What is there about babies which makes us hug and kiss and fondle them, so that even an enemy would give them help at that age?
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions—an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Most of the people who will walk behind me will be children so make the beat keep time with short steps.
—Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) Danish Author, Poet, Short Story Writer
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