quotations about children
What is the son but an extension of the father?
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
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
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT
Full of Grace
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
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
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"
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
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 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
Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature.
WALT DISNEY
Deeds Rather Than Words
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