quotations about children
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
We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
Alligators have the right idea ... they eat their young.
IDA CORWIN
Mildred Pierce
That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Quotable Walt Disney
Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.
F. PAUL WILSON
The Tomb
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Children are the root of all evil.... Happy the man who has his quiver empty.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Christmas Mystery
Families with babies, and families without babies, are so sorry for each other.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
Keep thou an open door between thy child's life and thine own.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Closing Door", Mother Stories
Setting a good example for your children does nothing but increase their embarrassment.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Quotable Quotes: Wit and Wisdom from the Greatest Minds of Our Time
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
If a child is given love, he becomes loving ... If he's helped when he needs help, he becomes helpful. And if he has been truly valued at home ... he grows up secure enough to look beyond himself to the welfare of others.
DR. JOYCE BROTHERS
Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2010
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH
Of Woman Born
It is better to have only one son endowed with good qualities than a hundred devoid of them. For the moon though one, dispels the darkness, which the stars, though numerous, do not.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
We know that the outcasts and misfits are the children most likely to become violent, so it only follows that we must pull them into the arms of love and/or acceptance, and find a place where they fit. If our system doesn't have a place where a child fits, there's something wrong with the system, not the child.
WILLIAM G. DEFOORE
Anger
It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Men
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
When people talk about wanting to "have children someday," what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.
PAUL REISER
Babyhood
Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
A Good Enough Parent
A state, a community, caring first for all its children, providing amply for their spiritual as for their temporal well-being, has organized the primitive Eden.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk