Childhood quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside childhood — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils; in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon."
"Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!"
"I have very fond memories of my childhood in Afghanistan, largely because my memories, unlike those of the current generation of Afghans, are untainted by the spectre of war, landmines, and famine."
"Childhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs."
"Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]"
"Between childhood, boyhood, adolescence & manhood (maturity) there should be sharp lines drawn w/ Tests , deaths, feats, rites stories, songs, & judgements."
"Flying fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments; it stirs our capacity for dreaming."
"Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind."
"Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace."
"Childhood obesity isn't about looks. And it's not about weight. It's about how our kids feel. And those are really the implications of the problem and the words that tell a fuller picture of the challenges that we face; you know, kids struggling in ways that they didn't a generation ago."
"There are many women in their late teens and early twenties who have either experienced violence in a relationship or have witnessed it at home in their childhood."
"I let go of childhood fears. I am a secure, empowered human being."
"A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree."
"If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength."
"You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well."
"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews."
"Something in me was always watching life from the outside, permanently obsessed with the notion of belonging vs. not-belonging [to a group]. It did not make for a happy childhood, but it was excellent training for a writer."
"I didn't know any gay people in my childhood."
"In the next 15 years, we can halve childhood deaths. That's doable."
"Wisdom leads us back to childhood."
