“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”

Source: Leaving Home‎ (1987), p. 20

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 8, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom of…" by Garrison Keillor?
Garrison Keillor photo
Garrison Keillor 61
American radio host and writer 1942

Related quotes

“At that Mother got proper blazing,
"And thank you, sir, kindly," said she.
"What, waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!"”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"Albert and the Lion", line 69.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

Joshua Ferris photo
Milton Friedman photo

“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

Cassandra Clare photo

“Nearly unlimited supernatural power, and all you do is use it to watch reruns. What a waste.”

Jace to Magnus, pg. 136
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Rahm Emanuel photo

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not before.”

Rahm Emanuel (1959) politician, investment banker, White House Chief of Staff

Interview to the Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzcbXi1Tkk About the quote: Emanuel was not the first to express this idea, as pointed out in a 2009 New York Times Magazine article https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02FOB-onlanguage-t.html. However this statement - which proposed a way the Obama administration could actually harness the chaos of the Financial Crisis of 2008 - became a frequently-repeated slogan https://www.forbes.com/2008/11/24/global-crisis-management-lead-management-cx_snj_1124joni.html#1ac549f65e5e for many economists, policy makers and business people who sought to improve the world's financial and economic systems.
/ 2000s

Rick Warren photo

“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Confucius photo

“What did you do today? Nothing say our little children, and so do I. What we most are is what we keep mistaking for nothing.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#155
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Kate Bush photo

“What could he do?
Should have been a father.
But he never even made it to his twenties.
What a waste —
Army dreamers.
Ooh, what a waste of
Army dreamers.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Related topics