Motivational Quotes

Children

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

- Decter, Midge

Best Quotes about Children

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

Robertson Davies

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Pope, Alexander

Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.

Cosby, Bill

Viewing the child solely as an immature person is a way of escaping comforting him.

Moustakas, Clark

But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Children are all foreigners.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Children are a great comfort to us in our old age, and they help us reach it faster too.

Ignorance... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Eliot, George

It takes three to make a child.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

10.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Jackson, Jesse

11.

Wen I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away my childish things. [I Corinthians]

Bible

12.

We do our children no favour by keeping them near, coddling them, or showing them off to adult visitors. Not that a nursemaid does not sometimes spoil them. But the greatest favour we can do our children is to give visible example of love and esteem to our spouse. As they grow up, they may then look forward to maturity so they too can find such love.

Eucharista Ward

13.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Norman Douglas

14.

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.

Dobson, Dr. James C.

15.

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.

Dorothy Parker

16.

Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up.

Picasso, Pablo

17.

Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

18.

Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.

Mead, Margaret

19.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

Auden, W. H.

20.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

Swift, Jonathan

21.

The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.

Wilbur, Ray L.

22.

Better a snotty child than his nose wiped off.

Proverb, English

23.

Never have children, only grand children.

Vidal, Gore

24.

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.

Abbott, Lyman

25.

Hugs can do great amounts of good -- especially for children.

Diana, Princess of Wales

26.

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.

Chase, Alexander

27.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!

William Shakespeare

28.

We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open.

Edwards, Harry

29.

Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework --an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life.

Friedan, Betty

30.

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.

Hazzard, Shirley

31.

A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.

Harrison, Jane

32.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

Orwell, George

33.

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Roosevelt, Theodore

34.

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.

Phyllis Diller

35.

It is not giving children more that spoils them; it is giving them more to avoid confrontation.

John Gray

36.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Oscar Wilde

37.

Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.

Waitley, Denis

38.

Alas! regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come nor care beyond today.

Gray, Thomas

39.

The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Canetti, Elias

41.

Birds in their little nest agree; and 'Tis a shameful sight, when children of one family fall out, and chide, and fight.

Watts, Isaac

42.

You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.

Dogen

43.

I am amused when goody-goodies proclaim, from the safety of their armchairs, that children are naturally prejudice-free, that they only learn to "hate" from listening to bigoted adults. Nonsense. Tolerance is a learned trait, like riding a bike or playing the piano. Those of us who actually live among children, who see them in their natural environment, know the truth: Left to their own devices, children will gang up on and abuse anyone who is even slightly different from the norm.

Josh Lieb

44.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

Curie, Madame Marie

45.

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

Rutherford, Samuel

46.

Children suck the mother when they are young and the father when they are old.

Proverb, English

47.

Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

48.

Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. He needs guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.

Davis, Bette

49.

Little girl's definition of conscience: Something that makes you tell your mother before your brother or sister does.

50.

The planting of trees in the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

Wilder, Thornton