quotations about children
She cannot understand how any woman should not want children, to be her companions and to trust in her, love her, reverence her; children whom she may nurse, protect, teach, guide, govern, mold into manhood and womanhood. To have this possession has been her dream ever since with alternate tenderness and severity she ruled her dolls. The hoped-for hour has come. She welcomes it with a gladsome awe. As she prepares to enter the unknown experience of motherhood, her heart is stirred, but more deeply, with all the glad apprehension with which she entered married life as bride. She goes to that mystic gateway which opens into the infinite beyond, and receives into her keeping God's gift of a little child. She wonders at the Father's confidence in her, wonders that He dares to trust so sacred a task to her care. But one child is not enough. She wishes a brood. The Oriental passion of motherhood possesses her. Another child is given to her, a third, a fourth. They cluster about her, sharing with each other and with her their songs and their sorrows, their toils and their sports. The Holy Family has reappeared again. No old master ever painted such a group; no Raphael ever interpreted, no painter could interpret, her holy gladness.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Home Builder
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, Forbes, 1991
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
Children need models more than they need critics.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
A strange mixture of fear and joy comes with driving off from the hospital with your firstborn in the vehicle. There's a powerful sense of transition and new beginning, and yet fear as well. It's a fear closely attached to the question, "What do I do with this thing?" It's a healthy fear born out of an awareness of the fragility of new life.
CHRIS SEIDMAN
Little Buddy
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
G.K. CHESTERTON
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them.
PHYLLIS DILLER
The Snark Handbook: Parenting Edition
We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.
HENRY FORD
My Life and Work
My friends with children say it's the quality of love that is so unique, the fact that you surrender yourself to love, and through that surrendering become transparent to your deepest feelings. Perhaps it's not having a child that is so striking, but that unconditional love, joy, happiness exist and finally, through the child, have a chance to be expressed. To finally, irrevocably love without holding anything back. Perhaps the magic--the love, happiness, fulfillment--existed in us all along like an underground river, but we could never see it or know it because we kept looking for it outside, in accomplishments, body sizes, and other people.
GENEEN ROTH
Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment
If we would amend the world, we should mend our selves; and teach our children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
I didn't want children because I didn't want them to suffer. I had a dog, which suffered enough. I don't even want a goldfish or a turtle. I have a desert plant in my house that needs a glass of water maybe once a year, which I can deliver.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
How parents interact with each child as he or she enters the family circle determines in great part that child's final destiny.
KEVIN LEMAN
The Birth Order Book
Few are fit to train monkeys, yet not one of us but thinks himself competent to bring up children.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they're born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.
RAY ROMANO
stand-up routine
The kids who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways.
RUSSELL A. BARKLEY
attributed, Dad's Wit and Wisdom: Quips and Quotes for Fantastic Fathers
The "Why?" cannot, and need not, be put into words. Those for whom a child's mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child's smile, would read such words in vain: while for any one that has ever loved one true child, no words are needed. For he will have known the awe that falls on one in the presence of a spirit fresh from GOD's hands, on whom no shadow of sin, and but the outermost fringe of the shadow of sorrow, has yet fallen: he will have felt the bitter contrast between the haunting selfishness that spoils his best deeds and the life that is but an overflowing love--for I think a child's first attitude to the world is a simple love for all living things: and he will have learned that the best work a man can do is when he works for love's sake only, with no thought of name, or gain, or earthly reward. No deed of ours, I suppose, on this side the grave, is really unselfish: yet if one can put forth all one's powers in a task where nothing of reward is hoped for but a little child's whispered thanks, and the airy touch of a little child's pure lips, one seems to come somewhere near to this.
LEWIS CARROLL
introduction, Alice's Adventures Under Ground
Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Leaving Home
Oh, kids are great! You can teach them to hate what you hate!
HOMER SIMPSON
The Simpsons
Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as separate as another continent.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Children are a comfort to men because the youngsters cannot contradict them.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims