Babies are necessary to grown-ups. A new baby is like the beginning of all things — wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities. In a world that is cutting down its trees to build highways, losing its earth to concrete… babies are almost the only remaining link with nature, with the natural world of living things from which we spring.
—Eda LeShan (1922–2002) American TV Personality, Playwright, Educator, Writer
A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.
—Jerry Seinfeld (b.1954) American Comedian
Don’t forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.
—May Sarton (1912–95) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Novelist
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
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
I actually remember feeling delight, at two o’clock in the morning, when the baby woke for his feed, because I so longed to have another look at him.
—Margaret Drabble (b.1939) English Novelist, Biographer, Critic, Short Story Writer
A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
Babies don’t need a vacation but I still see them at the beach. I’ll go over to them and say, ‘What are you doing here, you’ve never worked a day in your life!’.
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
The tiny madman in his padded cell.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
I don’t dislike babies, though I think very young ones rather disgusting.
—Queen Victoria (1819–1901) British Royal
From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can’t fold a paper in a crowded train.
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–78) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer of Children’s Books