Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.
—Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) British Novelist
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Childhood is a short season.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actress, Philanthropist
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
—Anonymous
Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
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
Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.
—Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81) Mauritian Writer, Painter, Visionary
The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.
—Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American Actor, Dancer, Singer
Childhood is a disease—a sickness that you grow out of.
—William Golding (1911–93) English Novelist
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.
—Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) Irish-born Literary, Art Critic
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
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
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
What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Our whole life is but a greater and longer childhood.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
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
Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath.
—Unknown
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
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 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
What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
—Meister Eckhart (c.1260–1327) German Christian Mystic
The ages of seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist