quotations about children
The child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott
Something in the heart of most human beings simply cannot abide pain inflicted on the innocent, especially children. Even broken men serving in the worst correctional facilities will often first take out their own rage on those who have caused suffering to children. Even in such a world of relative morality, causing harm to a child is still considered absolutely wrong. Period!
WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
What is the son but an extension of the father?
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"Words Are Easy, Books Are Not", New York Times, August 10, 1994
A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected -- never possessed, since he belongs to God.
J. D. SALINGER
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"
The more we shelter children from every disappointment, the more devastating future disappointments will be.
FRED G. GOSMAN
How to Be a Happy Parent ... In Spite of Your Children
Seems parents and children spend half their lives not seeing eye to eye. By the time they do find some common ground, there's barely any time left to enjoy it.
LOREN BRAY
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT
Full of Grace
Children are God's Apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"The Death of a Friend's Child"
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, Words from the Wise
Children are the root of all evil.... Happy the man who has his quiver empty.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Christmas Mystery
Children are taught to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of parents teaches children economy, arrogance, or submission. They are also encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
The dumbest thing I ever did was not having children. Absolute dumbest thing. Even worse than selling my bassoon. I see the error now. My sister's kids are turning out great. They were shockingly spoiled when they were little, but now their true personalities have taken over and they're just nice calm tall young people with personalities. One is at Kenyon College studying something with lasers and the other is an intern at a dollhouse museum.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
For the first two years you're up to your elbows in poo and puke. Then for the next ten, you feed them and educate them, and nurse them through every disease known to man--and some only known to veterinary science. Then they shut themselves in their bedroom and play cruel music at you and shout through the keyhole that you don't understand them and they hate you.
LAURA THYME
"The Gooseberry Bush", Rosemary & Thyme
In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage.
BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Love not your children unequally; or if you do, show it not, lest you make the one proud, and the other envious, and both fools.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Quotable Walt Disney
The native and untaught suggestions of inquisitive children do often offer things, that may set a considering man's thoughts on work. And I think there is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember.
MARGARET DRABBLE
The Millstone