quotations about children
It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it.
FRANK WARREN
attributed, The Little Red Book of Hope
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
Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
PHYLLIS DILLER
Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse
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
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
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
How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
A child is an uncut diamond.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.
BARBARA WALTERS
How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything
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"
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
I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!
HOMER SIMPSON
"The Wandering Juvie", The Simpsons
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
It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
CHARLES DICKENS
Master Humphrey's Clock
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"
It is important to communicate to children about what we are going through. We often speak in half truths. We don't frame the truth or explain our experience in terms they can understand. We need to take time to do this. What has to happen is that more people have to get involved with more children. Focus energy on the child. Children are raising themselves these days in all sorts of strange ways.
JAMES REDFIELD
interview, Edge Magazine, Jun. 1, 1994
Children are a comfort to men because the youngsters cannot contradict them.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
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
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