quotations about childhood
Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells
And sights, before the dark of reason grows.
JOHN BETJEMAN
Summoned By Bells
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
TOM ROBBINS
Still Life with Woodpecker
To be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.
HENNING MANKELL
When the Snow Fell
All too soon will Childhood gay
Realise Life's sober sadness.
Let's be merry while we may,
Innocent and happy Fay!
Elves were made for gladness!
LEWIS CARROLL
"Puck Lost and Found"
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields belov'd in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to sooth,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.
THOMAS GRAY
Odes on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
To the man grown the long crowded mile of his boyhood becomes less than the throw of a stone.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual prosperity or ill fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or disappointments--the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Holy Terrors
Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile
'Tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.
BEAUMONT & FLETCHER
Philaster; or Love Lies a-Bleeding
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN
The Shadow of the Wind
There were three terrible ages of childhood -- zero to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30.
CLEVELAND AMORY
The Cat and the Curmudgeon
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mill on the Floss