“Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.”

“How many children, discontented with the exercise of needful authority, might learn submission and thankfulness from the lot of others; such a temper as that we have been describing is very uncommon; the treatment of children oftener errs on the side of over-indulgence than aught else. How many might be taught better to appreciate the blessings which surround them by considering what some, less fortunate than themselves, are called upon to endure!”

“We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.”

“Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.”

“They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.”

“We don't yet know, above all, what the world might be like if children were to grow up without being subjected to humiliation, if parents would respect them and take them seriously as people.”

“I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.”

“If we pass on an unsustainable environment to our children we have failed them.”

“Staring at him the
way she might stare at a beloved place she
was not sure she would ever see again, trying
to commit the details to memory, to paint
them on the backs of her eyelids that she
might see it when she shut her eyes to sleep.”

“Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt;
It's like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.”