Children quotes

Children

25.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

25.4K quotes

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Children quotes (page 256 of 1272)

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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept."

Children Hurt Letting Go
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later."

Children Knowing Shapes
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children."

Children Mother Flower
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me,' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, 'Whatever,' and then for the evening, 'Oh, well,' but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children."

Children Morning Prayer
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us."

Years Children Kids
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal."

Thinking Children Careers
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"Having a child as a single mother was a crucible - maybe this is true for all parents. I got rid of so much stuff that didn't really matter in the scheme of things-like throwing stuff out of an airplane that kept me flying too low. What was left was essential, i.e. not a lot of extraneous stuff that had kept me busy and people-pleasing. I just didn't have the luxury of wasting my life force on so much stupidity and distraction. That made me strong."

Children Mother Strong
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall."

Thinking Children Daughter
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human? I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure."

Mean Children Lying
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are."

Children Kids Talking
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Anne Lamott Author, Essayist
Children

"We're like Magic 8-Balls. After you ask your question and shake the 8-Ball, you read the answer in the little window. If you ever broke open a Magic 8-Ball with a hammer, you discovered that it contained a many-sided plastic object, with an answer on every facet, floating in a cylinder of murky blue fluid. The many-sided core held the answer to your question. My theory is that, as with our children, as with every surface of that geodesic dome inside the 8-Ball, every age we've ever been is who we are."

Children Magic Blue
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Anne Sexton Poet, Author
Children

"Loving me with my shoes off means loving my long brown legs, sweet dears, as good as spoons; and my feet, those two children let out to play naked."

Mean Children Sweet
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Anne Sexton Poet, Author
Children

"I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs."

Children Growing Up Flower
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Anne Sexton Poet, Author
Children

"the heart, this child of myself that resides in the flesh, this ultimate signature of the me, the start of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche."

Children Heart Sleep
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Anne Sexton Poet, Author
Children

"The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died."

Children Eight Piano
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Anthony Bourdain Chef, Author, Television Personality
Children

"I guess my whole life, as much as I might have wanted a child for the reason that everybody wants one, I always recognized that at no point until I was 50 was I old enough or up to the job. I thought, you know what, I not only really want a child, but at this point, finally in my life, I think I'm up to the job and I'm the type of person who could do the job well and I'm financially prepared to look after a child."

Thinking Children Jobs
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Anthony Bourdain Chef, Author, Television Personality
Children

"As I see it, fast food outfits have targeted small children with their advertising in a very effective way. You know, it's clowns and kid's toys and bright colors and things like that."

Children Kids Color
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Anthony Bourdain Chef, Author, Television Personality
Children

"My mom had Julia Child and 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook' on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes."

Children Mom Refrigerators
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Anthony Bourdain Chef, Author, Television Personality
Children

"Italy is good in the sense that when you bring a child to a restaurant in Italy, they're happy to see it. The waiters will say "complimenti" and welcome you and dote after the kid. They don't treat you like you just brought in this horrible probably soon-to-be-squealing creature who's going to be difficult."

Children Kids Welcome
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