quotations about children
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 no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
CHARLES DICKENS
Master Humphrey's Clock
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
How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
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
A child is an uncut diamond.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!
HOMER SIMPSON
"The Wandering Juvie", The Simpsons
Children, no matter how gifted, can't see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime, and telling them that things will be fine when they grow up does no good at all.
JOHN SAUL
Shadows
That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterward makes him a manager of life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is more in the education of children than the everlasting iteration of the word "don't!"
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Madame Louise Colet, Dec. 11, 1852
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Our children are the only possessions we can take to heaven.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread,
She whipped them all well and put them to bed.
ANONYMOUS
nursery rhyme
And where, on earth, dwell hope and truth?
In childhood's uncorrupted heart;
Alas! too soon to guileless youth
The world doth its dark code impart!
ANNE S. BUSHBY
"The Morn of Life"
[Children are] like talking animals. Their consciousness is so different from ours that they constitute a different species. They don't have to be particularly interesting children; just the fact that they are children is sufficient. They don't know what anything is, so they have to make it up. No matter how dull they are, they still have to figure things out for themselves.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993