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Biologically, a child (plural children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of child generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. Children generally have fewer rights and less responsibility than adults. They are classed as unable to make serious decisions, and legally must be under the care of their parents or another responsible caregiver.
Child may also describe a relationship with a parent (such as sons and daughters of any age) or, metaphorically an authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe, or religion; it can also signify being strongly affected by a specific time, place, or circumstance, as in "a child of nature" or "a child of the Sixties".
- Shield children from everything false; guard them against worthless music; protect them from obscenity; protect them from false competitions; protect them from affirmation of selfhood. The more so, since it is necessary to inculcate a love for incessant learning. The muscles must not gain the upper hand over mind and heart.
- Agni Yoga, New Era Community (1926), sect. 116. Reported in Harold Balyoz, Three Remarkable Women (1986), p. 97
- Monday's child is fair in face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for its living;
And a child that's born on a Christmas day,
Is fair and wise, good and gay.- Anonymous; reported in Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire (1838), by Anna E. K. S. Bray, vol. 2, pp. 287–88. In some versions, "the Sabbath day" is substituted for "a Christmas day". For further information and other alternative wordings, see Monday's Child
- I said...how, and why, young children, were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning.
- Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570), preface
- Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
- Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), "Of Parents and Children"
- Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models.
- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem"
- Every time a child says "I don’t believe in fairies" there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (1928), act 1
- For children are the glory of marriage, the treasure of parents, the wealth of family life. They develop within their parents an entire cluster of virtues, such as paternal love and maternal affection, devotion and self-denial, care for the future, involvement in society, the art of nurturing. With their parents, children place restraints upon ambition, reconcile the contrasts, soften the differences, bring their souls ever closer together, provide them with a common interest that lies outside of them, and opens their eyes and hearts to their surroundings and for their posterity. As with living mirrors they show their parents their own virtues and faults, force them to reform themselves, mitigating their criticisms, and teaching them how hard it is to govern a person.
- Herman Bavinck, The Christian Family (1908)
- Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
- L. Frank Baum, Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
- Not a day passes, but I get a letter from a child. They come sometimes singly, sometimes in batches of 50 or 100. Entire classes, where school teachers have read my stories, have written to me. I answer every one personally. When I was a child I know how, if I had received a real letter from an author whose book I'd read, I would have been the happiest boy alive. And if I am to do any good in this world my highest ambition will be to make children happy.
- L. Frank Baum, Interview, originally published in the Philadelphia North American (3 October 1904); reprinted in The Baum Bugle (Spring 1985)
- She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild:
She was an aggravating child.- Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Tales (1907), "Rebecca"
- Love for children is perhaps the most intense love; for it knows that it has nothing to hope for.
- Werner Bergengruen, Dichtergehäuse (Zurich-Munich, 1966), p. 40
- Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long
Hearing wild birds' song.- William Blake, "The Little Girl Lost", st. 4; Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
- Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves... Aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish.
- H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (1889), pp. 251-52
- There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
- Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris (1935), pt. 1, ch. 2
- We wore a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair. We sowed in youth a mustard seed;
We cut an almond rod.
We now are grown up to riper age:
Are they withered in the sod?- Charlotte Brontë, "19 December 1835", in Clement Shorter (ed.) Complete Poems (1925)
- Children become, while little, our delights,
When they grow bigger, they begin to fright's.- John Bunyan, A Book for Boys and Girls: or, Country Rhimes for Children (1686), no. 66: Upon the Disobedient Child
- The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that.
- Charles Buxton, Notes of Thought (London: John Murray, 1883), p. 147
- Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.
- John Calvin, Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, pg. 57
- That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory.
- John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1550), p. 69
- A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents," and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception."
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., parag. 2378. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009. Retrieved March 20, 2009
- So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Sonnet to a Friend Who Asked How I Felt When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me" (1797)
- Haec ... ornamenta [sunt] mea.
- These are my ornaments.
- Cornelia, quoted by Valerius Maximus, bk. 4, 4, incipit, relating an anecdote which has often been cited. A Campanian lady, who was at the time on a visit to her, having displayed to Cornelia some very beautiful ornaments which she possessed, desired the latter, in return, to exhibit her own. The Roman mother purposely detained her in conversation until her children returned from school, when, pointing to them, she said this famous locution: also commonly translated as "Here are my jewels." Reported in Marcius Willson, Outlines of History, university ed. (New York: Ivison & Phinney, 1854), pt. 1, ch. 6, p. 170, note
- Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.'
- Walt Disney Recorded statement (1938) used in The Pixar Story (2008 documentary)
- Nothing matters more to a child than a place to call home.
- Brenda Donald, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, "Brenda Donald: Mission possible for Maryland: 1,000 new foster parents by 2010", Examiner.com (5 February 2008)
- Sometimes, you have to take a risk to give your kids what you want to give them.
- Noel Edmonds, presenting the gameshow Deal or No Deal (5 November 2008)
- In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's.
- George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861), ch. 14
- Adults make their children suffer for the sake of appearances, or to save themselves a little trouble. But it is the job of an adult, especially a mother, to help her child develop its natural abilities. It is a terrible wrong to deprive children of their freedom and rob them of their personalities. Let your children play as they please! To play freely on this earth is the one privilege nature has given to children. If they are allowed to play, they will grow up to be healthy human beings. Of this, at least, I am absolutely certain.
- Kaneko Fumiko, The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman (M.E. Sharpe, 1991), translated by Jean Inglis
- Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don't read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children. What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic." As has already been pointed out by previous testimony, a little healthy, normal child has never been made worse for reading comic magazines. The basic personality of a child is established before he reaches the age of comic-book reading. I don’t believe anything that has ever been written can make a child overaggressive or delinquent. The roots of such characteristics are much deeper. The truth is that delinquency is the product of real environment, in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads. There are many problems that reach our children today. They are tied up with insecurity. No pill can cure them. No law will legislate them out of being. The problems are economic and social and they are complex. Our people need understanding; they need to have affection, decent homes, decent food.
- William Gaines, Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency (April 22, 1954); Betsy Gomez, "60 Years Ago Today: The US Senate Puts Comics on Trial!", cbldf.org (April 22, 2014)
- [T]o produce children without regard to consequences is to use procreative power irresponsibly, the more so when there is involved the imposition of one partner’s will upon the other.
- Iago Galdston (ed.) The Family in Contemporary Society (London: International Universities Press, 1958), p. 15 (Church of England)
- Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923), "On Children"
- For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.- Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), st. 6
- An unrestrained production of children without realistic regard to God-given responsibilities involved in bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord may be as sinful and as selfish an indulgence of the lusts of the flesh as is the complete avoidance of parenthood.
- Dr. John L. Gustafson, President of the New York Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Church, in The New York Times (July 25, 1958); as quoted in Norman St. John-Stevas, Life, Death and the Law (Indiana UP, 1961), p. 72
- No child should ever be taken from or denied a loving home in the Orwellian name of "gender-affirming care."
- Laura Bryant Hanford, "Trans Activists Quietly Build 'Gender-Affirming' Monopoly On Centers For Abused Children", The Federalist (May 28, 2024)
- It is terrible, absolutely mindless, ... Hundreds of children die every minute. But instead of giving them the basics of life we spend more than a million dollars a minute on arms. And all we buy is more and more insecurity, more and more instability.
- George Ignatieff, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and NATO. Cited in Awake! magazine, 9/22 (1984)
- It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them.
- Jean Ingelow, in her Preface to the American edition of Fated to be Free (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1875), p. iv
- For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
- The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
- And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.
- Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
- Well you've cracked the sky
Scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh
Will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live
Will you tell us when to die?
I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?
- People now began bringing him young children for him to touch them, but the disciples reprimanded them. At seeing this, Jesus was indignant and said to them: "Let the young children come to me; do not try to stop them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such ones. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a young child will by no means enter into it." And he took the children into his arms and began blessing them, laying his hands on them.
- In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
- Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea... Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
- If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
- Carl Jung, The Integration of the Personality (1939)
- The children wear military uniforms and become used to handling the anti-aircraft artillery flak guns. Fifteen and sixteen-year-old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps the babies will also be employed. Total war!!
- Friedrich Kellner, My Opposition (1943)
- Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.
- John F. Kennedy, Re: United States Committee for UNICEF (July 25, 1963), Box 11, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence Series, White House Central Chronological File, Presidential Papers, Papers of John F. Kennedy
- Put a child in a den of thieves (but the child must not remain there so long that it is corrupted itself); that is, let it remain there only for a brief time. Then let it come home and tell everything it has experienced. You will note that the child, who is a good observer and has an excellent memory (as does every child), will tell everything in the greatest detail, yet in such a way that in a certain sense the important is omitted. Therefore someone who does not know that the child has been among thieves would least suspect it on the basis of the child's story. What is it, then, that the child leaves out, what is it that the child has not discovered? It is the evil. Yet the child's story about what it has seen and heard is entirely accurate. What then does the child lack? What is it that so often makes a child's story the most profound mockery of the adults? It is knowledge of evil, that the child lacks knowledge of evil, that the child does not even feel inclined to want to be knowledgeable about evil.
- Soren Kierkegaard Works of Love (1847), translated by Howard and Edna Hong (1995), pp. 285-286
- ... that kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly that today’s children can recognize 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, interviewed by Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast (February 25, 2016)
- All I know is Nanhoï's love. My son is my life. I believe in the magic of this love. He is the embodiment of life to me. The embodiment of beauty. Through him I'll find redemption and salvation. Then the wound in my soul – the wound I thought would never scar over – will stop bleeding.
- Klaus Kinski, Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 316
- Every child, at birth, is the Universal Man. But, as it grows, we turn it into "a petty man." It should be the function of education to turn it again into the original "Universal Man."
- Kuvempu, Vishwa-Manava, as quoted in Harōgadde Mānappa Nāyaka, Epic in Indian Literature (1985) p. xix
- C'est l'honneur de l'homme de retrouver dans ses enfants l'ingratitude qu'il eut pour ses pères, et de finir ainsi, comme Dieu, par un sentiment désintéressé.
- It is the honor of man to find again in his children the ingratitude which he showed towards his own parents, and thus to conclude, like God, by a disinterested sentiment.
- Henri Lacordaire, Trente-neuvième Conférence: De l'établissement du regne de Jésus-Christ (1846), Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris, vol. 3 (Paris: Libraire Ch. Poussielgue, 1893), p. 73.
- Paraphrased in Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), p. 255:
- It is an honor for you to find again in your children the same ingratitude you showed toward your own fathers and thus attain to the perfection of loving, like God, without self-interest.
- A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university ... This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.
- R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (1967)
- I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature...but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind.
- Charles Lamb, "A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People", Essays of Elia (1823)
- A child's a plaything for an hour.
- Charles Lamb, "Parental Recollections", Poetry for Children, Entirely Original, 2 vols. (London: M. J. Godwin, 1809)
- All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured.
- Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1984), p. 73
- I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads.
- Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II (1998), p. 7
- We were all created to do as our parents have done, to beget and rear children. This is a duty which God has laid upon us, commanded, and implanted in us, as is proved by our bodily members, our daily emotions, and the example of all mankind.
- Martin Luther, Exhortation to the Knights of the Teutonic Order (1525)
- Children are a battle of a different sort ... A battle without banners or warhorns, but no less fierce ... As hard as birth can be, what comes after is even harder.
- George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (1999), ch. 6 (loq. Catelyn Stark)
- Children hallow small things. 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 (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2001), p. 27
- Children have rights that adults do not have, and these rights come before the rights of adults.
- Janne Haaland Matlary, quoted in "Professor Puts Kids' Rights First", Zenit (23 March 2007). Archived at TrueGate
- With the birth of each child you lose two novels.
- Candia McWilliam, as quoted in The Guardian (5 May 1993).
- The welfare of a child is not to be measured by money only, nor by physical comfort only.
- Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley, L.J., In re McGrath (Infants), L. R. 1 C. D. (1893), p. 148; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 188.
- There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence.
- Alice Meynell, The Children (London: John Lane, 1897), "Fellow Travellers with a Bird. II", p. 17.
- Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.
- Alice Meynell, The Children (London: John Lane, 1897), "Under the Early Stars", p. 44.
- Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos.
- Alice Meynell, Children of the Old Masters (Italian School) (London: Duckworth and Co., 1903), "Introductory Note", p. 5
- Children have a fastidiousness that time is slow to cure. It is to be wondered, for example, whether if the elderly were half as hungry as children are they would yet find so many things at table to be detestable.
- Alice Meynell, Childhood (London: J. T. Batsford, 1913), "IX. Injustice", p. 48.
- Look around you. Everywhere. They are there. In every home — lurking in dark corners ... small, bi-pedal entities with almost human brains play their games in which adults are the pawns. They play and wait for the time when they will take over the world!
- John Blair Moore, Invaders from Home, Piranha Press, 1990, Book 1 of 6.
- Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
- Moses, Deuteronomy 6:4 - 9 (KJV)
- Many of my children have worked out well. And I've had very little to do with it. I think they come into the world, to a certain extent, pre-made, and you just sit there and watch. ... It's been simply amazing to me as a parent to see how much is preordained. The shy baby is the shy adult. The booming, obnoxious, domineering baby is the booming, obnoxious, domineering adult. I've never found a way to fix that. ... I can be cheerful about it, but I can't fix it.
- Charlie Munger, "Berkshire Hathaway VP Charlie Munger on investing", CNBC Television (February 15, 2019), YouTube (quote at 30:08 of 31:45)
- A child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing.
- A. S. Neill, Summerhill (1960), Ch. 1.
- [C]hildren’s writing is so often so beautiful, because it’s so close to their own true tongues. On the other hand, it’s very boring because they have no experience in life.
- Grace Paley Interview with the Boston Review (September 1, 1976)
- When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
- Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 13:1 (KJV)
- Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.
- Look! Sons are an inheritance from Jehovah; the fruitage of the belly is a reward.
- Lo, children and the fruit of the womb: are an heritage and gift, that cometh of the Lord. Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant: even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate.
- Psalm 127:3–5 (BCP)
- A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment.
- Pope John Paul II, "Additional Meditation" (July 17, 1994). Archived from the original on May 11, 2006. Retrieved October 23, 2006
- But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?"
- Cesare Pavese, Among Women Only (1949), ch. 9
- "I thought you said people see what they expect to see."
Children don't. Too often they see what's there.- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (1996), p. 59 (ISBN 978-0-06-105905-6)
- Neither of you have a need for children in your present personalities. You are almost finished with incarnations on the earth, so much so that the physical bodies will return completely and unfragmented upon your physical death. This is always the case in the final earth life. The physical property is left behind, no portion of it being carried on that plane through children.
- Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions (1997), bk. 1, session 9
- A close watch must be kept on the children, and they must never be left alone anywhere, whether they are in ill or good health. This constant supervision should be exercised gently and with a certain trustfulness calculated to make them think that one loves them, and that it is only to enjoy their company that one is with them. This will make them love their supervision rather than fear it.
- Advice to Jesuit school ushers at Port Royal 1615; as quoted in Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter comics, 1941-1948 pp. 99-100
- A person's lifeworm is a tangle of atomic worldlines. A braid. The dotty little atoms trace out smooth lines in spacetime: you are the pattern that these lines make up. There is no one single atom that is exclusively yours. I breathe an atom out, you breathe it in. Your garbage helps my tomatoes grow. And so the little spacetime threads weave us all together. The human race is a single vast tapestry, linked by our shared food and air. There are larger links as well: sperm, egg and umblilicus. Each family tree is an organic whole. Your spacetime body tapers back to the threads of mother's egg and father's sperm. And children, if you have them, are forever rooted in your flesh.
- Rudy Rucker, The Sex Sphere (1983)
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- My daughter, before she was sixteen, and especially before she was six, absolutely stunned me every day by the simple beauty and sweetness of her truth.
- William Saroyan, Chance Meetings (1978)
- And though she be but little, she is fierce.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595 or 1596), act 3, sc. 2 (loq. Helena, of Hermia)
- Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.- William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c. 1599), act 2, sc. 7 (loq. Jaques)
- I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!
- Homer Simpson, in The Simpsons, season 15, episode 16: "The Wandering Juvie"" (aired March 28, 2004), written by John Frink & Don Payne
- Children are the keys of Paradise ... They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.
- Richard Henry Stoddard, Songs of Summer (1856), p. 113
- Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973), Emotions
- Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (Macmillan & Co., 1917), sect. 77
- I honestly don't understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It's silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?
- Sharon Tate as quoted in Greg King, Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders (2000)
- You'll never know how I watched you
From the shadows as a child
You'll never know how it feels to be the one
Who's left behind- GoldenEye (1995) theme, written by Bono and The Edge, sung by Tina Turner
- You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.
- P. L. Travers, as quoted in Jack Zipes, Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (2002)
- So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in April 2013, as quoted in Brian Ross, "Boston Bombing Day 1: The Stunning Stop the Killers Made After the Attack",ABC News (18 April 2016); cf. Arnaud Amalric
- If you really look at it, there's no way your life could be more messed up than by having a child who can't take care of themselves.
- James D. Watson, as quoted in Alan Boyle, "DNA pioneer James Watson's genetic prescription: Have kids early", Science News, NBC (27 September 2013)
- I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed... That offends me deeply, because the world is a scary and horrifying place, and everyone's going to get old and die, if they're that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice. Children need horror because there are things they don't understand. It helps them to codify it if it is mythologized, if it's put into the context of a story, whether the story has a happy ending or not. If it scares them and shows them a little bit of the dark side of the world that is there and always will be, it's helping them out when they have to face it as adults.
- Joss Whedon to Michael Silverberg of NPR; quoted in the Buffy Monster Book (2000)
- Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
- Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893), act 2
- A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.
- Gene Wolfe, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Orbit 10 (1972), ed. Damon Knight. Reprinted in a set of three novellas, The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).
- Train them to virtue; habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful knowledge. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones.
- John Adams, p. 50.
- Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys.
- Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 50.
- Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf.
- Theodore L. Cuyler, p. 50.
- Jesus was the first great teacher of men who showed a genuine sympathy for childhood. When He said "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," it was a revelation.
- Edward Eggleston, p. 49.
- As in the Master's spirit you take into your arms the little ones, His own everlasting arms will encircle them and you. He will pity both their and your simplicity; and as in unseen presence He comes again, His blessing will breathe upon you.
- James Hamilton, p. 50.
- Bring your little children to the Saviour. Place them in His arms. Devote them to His service. Born in His camp, let them wear from the first His colors. Taking advantage of timely opportunities, and with all tenderness of spirit, seek to endear them to the Friend of Sinners, the Good Shepherd of the lambs, the loving Guardian of the little children. And not only teach them, but govern them. And in order to govern them, govern yourselves.
- James Hamilton, p. 50.
- Children have more need of models than of critics.
- Joseph Joubert, p. 49.
- Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning.
- Joseph Joubert, p. 51.
- Johnny is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed as children are wont to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down.
- Robert Leighton, p. 51.
- God has given you your child, that the sight of him, from time to time, might remind you of His goodness, and induce you to praise Him with filial reverence.
- Christian Scriver, p. 50.
- We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?
- Lydia Sigourney, p. 51.
- The glorified spirit of the infant is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime.
- Lydia Sigourney, p. 53.
- We are but children, the things that we do
Are as sports of a babe to the Infinite view,
That sees all our weakness, and pities it too.
And oh! when aweary, may we be so blest
As to sink, like an innocent child, to our rest,
And feel ourselves clasped to the Infinite breast.- F. Burge Smith, p. 51.
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