Quotes about child

page 8

“If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.”

“You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience.”

“… small helpings, no seconds, no snacking, and a little bit of everything. - Julia Child”

“Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.”

“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.”

“A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

“As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.”

“Anytime you feel love for anything, be it stone, tree, lover, or child, you are touched by the Goddess's magick…”

“I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”

“If a person continues to see giants, it means he is still looking at the world through the eyes of a child.”

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

“A grandchild is God's reward for raising a child.”

“She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child.”

“The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.”

“The world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence.”

“I write, not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.”

“Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”

“What are you doing with the child?" I inquired cautiously.
"I'm teachin' young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet," he explained.”

“The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.”

“It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.”

“What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.”

“It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.”

“One Child:
I hope it will be said we taught them to stand tall & proud, even in the face of history & the future was made new & whole for us all, one child at a time.”

“I would have made a terrible parent. The first time my child didn't do what I wanted, I'd kill him.”

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”

“What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream”

“I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.”

“Why, what's the matter wi' the poor child?" she demanded of Jamie. "Has she had an accident o' some sort?"

"No, it's only she's married me," he said, "though if ye care to call it an accident, ye may.”

“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature.”

“I have no idea what you just said, child,' Breeze said. 'So I'm simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.”

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”

“The truth is that all examples of child protection and parental care, and all associated bodily organs … are examples of the working in nature of the kin-selection principle.”

“My prayer is simple my dear one, my dear one. May you never need understand. My prayer is for peacetime, my child, my child. Live it well and this life can be grand.”

“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of the knowledge not the knowledge in pursuit of the child.”

“Often a man can play the helpless child in front of a woman, but he can almost never bring it off when he feels most like a helpless child.”

“As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”

“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-haired child.”

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.”

“Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.”

“Child of lightning, beware the earth,
The giants' revenge the seven shall birth,
The forge and the dove shall break the cage,
And death unleash through Hera's rage.”

“Be a child again. Flirt. Giggle. Dip your cookies in your milk. Take a nap. Say you're sorry if you hurt someone. Chase a butterfly. Be a child again.”

“The light of the Christmas star to you. The warmth of home and hearth to you. The cheer and goodwill of friends to you. The hope of a child-like heart to you. The joy of a thousand angels to you. The love of the Son and God's peace to you.”

“… I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.”

“Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.”

“A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.”

“The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.”

“Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.”

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance…”

“When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”

“Ian shrugged like he didn't care, though his reddened face indicated differently.
- 'Tis always the same. Either they're no' interested because they think I'm a child, or they are interested because they think I'm a child, which is even worse.”

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.”

“Listen to this, okay? Just listen. You hear that? That's market bacon hitting the pan. Today a child is born unto us, and his name will be bacon.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“A heart's a heart, in a child or a man. You are tougher than you feel right now. Your roots are deep, your canopy's spread wide. You're going to show everyone what it means to be a king.”

“They were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived—bound, in other words, for life.”

“You can't raise a child to believe the opposite of what you do.”

“I am a glorious child of God. I am joyful, serene, positive, and loving.”

“Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”

“When I was a child, it was a matter of pride that I could plow through a Nancy Drew story in one afternoon, and begin another in the evening…. I was probably trying to impress the librarians who kept me supplied with books.”

“The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.”

“Perhaps that is what it means to be a father- to teach your child to live without you. If so, no one was a greater father than I.”

“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.”

“It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts.”

“Teach a child to read and he/she will pass a literary test.”

“To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.”

“This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period.”

“Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.”

“Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.”

“A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter.”

“When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit.”

“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.”

“A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes… And a good mother is someone whose child wants to follow her.”

“Some people never say those words "I love you".
It's not their style to be so bold.
Some people never say those words "I love you".
But like a child, they're longing to be told.”

“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”

“Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”

“Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.”

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.”

“I made the wrong choice," I whispered.
My mother shook her head.
"A child should never have to choose.”

“I once loved a woman, a child I am told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul.”

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”

“Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.”

“Come clean with a child heart
Laugh as peaches in the summer wind
Let rain on a house roof be a song
Let the writing on your face
be a smell of apple orchards on late June.”

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

“What I did next was so impulsive and dangerous I should've been named ADHD poster child of the year.”

“My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.”

“How can so much beauty hide such a bruised and steely heart, and why must I love him, why must I lean in my weariness upon his irresistible yet indomitable strength? Is he not the wizend funeral spirit of a dead man in a child's clothes?”

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

“The money men make from their willingness to work the least desirable hours is not a sign of discrimination against women, but a sign of the willingness of mostly married men to lose sleep to support the family as their wife loses sleep to feed the child. A willingness to do the uncomfortable shifts is one reason married men earn more than twice what never-married men earn. Men's contribution, made at night, need not be lost in the dark.”

“Kunti, or Pritha, is the daughter of Shoora of the Vrishnis, given away when just a child to her father’s childless friend Kuntibhoja. This rankles deep within her; she voices her resentment pointedly both before and after the Kurukshetra war. Growing up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments, she finds no mother; Kuntibhoja himself hands her over, in adolescence, to the vagaries of the eccentric, w:Irascibleirascible and fiery sage Durvasa. Should she displease the sage, she is warned, it will dishonour her guardian’s clan as well as her own.”

“Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.”

“In the twilight of late enlightenment, the insight gains shape that our "praxis," which we always held to be the most legitimate child of reason, in fact, represents the central myth of modernity.”

“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

::like a buttercup

::::upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

::I come, my sweet,

::::to sing to you.

We lived long together,

::a life filled,

::::if you will,

with flowers. So that

::I was cheered

::::when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

::in hell.

::::Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

::that we both loved,

::::even to this poor

colorless thing —

::I saw it

::::when I was a child —

little prized among the living

::but the dead see,

::::asking among themselves:

What do I remember

::that was shaped

::::as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
::with tears.
::::Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
::though too weak a wash of crimson
::::colors it
to make it wholly credible.
::There is something
::::something urgent
I have to say to you
::and you alone
::::but it must wait
while I drink in
::the joy of your approach,
::::perhaps for the last time.
And so
::with fear in my heart
::::I drag it out
and keep on talking
::for I dare not stop.”

“One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.”

“Your child's future was the first to go with budget cuts,
if you think that hurts then wait here comes the upper-cut,
the school was garbage in the first place that's on the up and up.”

“My main inspiration is sardonic British TV critics like Charlie Brooker, whose excellent show Screenwipe is fully on Youtube, and I recommend everyone watch it. He used to write for a PC magazine I read fanatically as a child. My own style is a mixture of him, possibly Douglas Adams, and internet writers like Seanbaby, Old Man Murray, or Something Awful. I’m such a rip-off.”

“Buchanan is worse than a child playing with matches because he understands the dangerous impact of what he says.”

“Why should we make account of time, or of magnitude, or of figure? The soul knows how to play with them as a young child plays with graybeards and in churches.”

“The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died forever.

The shoulder of the stone does not know you
nor the black silk on which you are crumbling.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

The autumn will come with conches,
misty grapes and clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.”