Children quotes
25.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside children — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungathered; Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee, Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree."
"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical."
"He's convinced most human adults do not know how to play anymore and that playing is one of the best ways to think. Franky finds children, by far, much more pleasant and intelligent than most adults, but they are easily ruined by their families, schools, and society. He says one of the ways they are ruined is by being forced to think of all the tasks that need to be done as work, not as play. It takes the joy out of living."
"I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul listened intensely; for from within were heard Murmurings whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things, Of ebb and flow, and ever enduring power, And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless Agitation."
"You can't work at a relationship; you can't control it. You have to be lucky and go through your life. If you are not lucky you have to be prepared for some degree of suffering. That's why most relationships are very difficult and have some degree of pain. People stay together because of inertia, they don't have the energy. Because they are frightened of being lonely, or they have children."
"There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with."
"Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history."
"And because I love this life I know I shall love death as well The child cries out when From the right breast the mother Takes it away, in the very next moment To find in the left one Its consolation."
"Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men."
"They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance."
"Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude."
"A sleeping child gives me the impression of a traveler in a very far country."
"If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him."
"At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all."
"My husband and I speak an ancient language called grammatical English, and the kids speak a strange dialect which is difficult to decode because it is based on only four phrases: 'Huh,' 'I dunno,' 'It's not my turn,' and 'I do everything around here!"
"She was not, herself, hugely in favour of motherhood in general. Obviously it was necessary, but it wasn't exactly difficult. Even cats managed it. But women acted as if they'd been given a medal that entitled them to boss people around. It was as if, just because they'd got the label which said "mother," everyone else got a tiny part of the label that said "child"."
"Touch a scientist and you touch a child."
"I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face."
"By God, I shall spend the rest of my life getting my heart back, healing and forgetting every scar you put upon me when I was a child. The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape."
"Education ought everywhere to be religious education. At the same time, parents are farther bound to employ no instructors who will not educate their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons, is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves."
