quotations about children
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD
Electricity on the Farm
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"
We can't control everything thing our kids do. Sooner or later they're just gonna do what they're gonna do. They're like people that way.
ROSEANNE BARR
"Bird is the Word", Roseanne
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
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
BILL COSBY
Fatherhood
A child's voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who've forgotten how to listen.
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"There Was a Little Girl"
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
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
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
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
[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
Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
The pressures on children today were not good, it seemed to him. A frankness about sex and drugs, explicit newspapers, four-letter words tossed from the television. A different type of child, more knowing but less loveable, was being created.
GUY BELLAMY
The Man Who Won
Motherhood is an early retirement position. Your children do grow up.
COLLEEN PARRO
PBS interview
I wasn't really that informed about the two-year-old. Oh, I'd read about them, and occasionally I'd see documentaries on the Discovery Channel showing two-year-olds in the wild, where they belong.
RAY ROMANO
Everything and a Kite
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
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
Our children are the only possessions we can take to heaven.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers