quotations about children
Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others; already they are men.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind"
Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, May 17, 2014
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
There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
attributed, Pearls of Wisdom
A child is a deep mystery. It has a life of its own, which it reveals to no one unless it meets with sympathy. Snub its first halting confidences concerning the inner life, or laugh at them, or be cross or indifferent, and you close the door against yourself forever.
AMELIA E. BARR
All the Days of My Life
A child is a priest of the ordinary, fulfilling a sacred office that absolutely no one else can fill. The simplest gesture, the ephemeral movement, the commonest object all become precious beyond words when touched, noticed, lived by one's own dear child.
MIKE MASON
The Mystery of Children
Have you never, when waves were breaking, watched children at sport on the beach,
With their little feet tempting the foam-fringe, till with stronger and further reach
Than they dreamed of, a billow comes bursting, how they turn and scamper and screech!
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology"
Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.
STEPHANIE MARTSON
The Magic of Encouragement
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them.
CHARLES LAMB
"A Bachelor's Complaint", Elia and the Last Essays of Elia
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children." And you say "Why?" And they say, "Because a child is so truthful. That's what I love about 'em...they tell the truth." That's a lie! I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
BILL COSBY
Bill Cosby: Himself
Half the human race are taken out of the world as children. I think that proves God's great fondness for children as children.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Love of children is the homage of the heart to unsullied purity. Indeed, children are the bright side of life. From our sins and sorrows, how refreshing is it to turn to their artless ways and purer joys! Would that they could all be so educated, as not, in their after-years, to darken life by their offenses!
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.
MAXIM GORKY
"Creatures that Once were Men"
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD
Electricity on the Farm
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"Nurse's Song", Songs of Innocence
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