quotations about children
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
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
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
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
It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
CHARLES DICKENS
Master Humphrey's Clock
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
Children are natural mimics. They act like their parents in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
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
Your children are not little mirrors reflecting back the good or bad job you've done.
HARRIET LERNER
Twitter post, May 17, 2014
The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It ... is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.
MARIANNE E. NEIFERT
Dr. Mom's Parenting Guide
Every child lives up to the expectation you have for him.
KEVIN LEMAN
Have a New Kid by Friday
Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Children ... are unripe and imperfect; their virtues, therefore, are to be considered not merely as relative to their actual state, but principally in reference to that maturity and perfection to which nature has destined them.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
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
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
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 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
Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.
PAUL REISER
Good Housekeeping, 1997