Quotes about children

"When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them."

Dangerfield, Rodney on children   

"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 on 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 on children
3 fans of this quote   

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

Diana, Princess of Wales on children
3 fans of this quote   

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

Diller, Phyllis on children   

"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. on children   

"Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations."

Dobson, Dr. James C. on children
3 fans of this quote   

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

Dogen on children
3 fans of this quote   

"So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world."

Duncan, Isadora on children   

"The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet."

Duncan, Isadora on children   

"Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say."

Dyer, Wayne on children
7 fans of this quote   

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

Edwards, Harry on children
3 fans of this quote   

"A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person."

Ehrenreich, Barbara on children   

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

Eliot, George on children   

"Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss."

Elk, Black on children   

"There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on children   

"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 on children   

"Who is not attracted by bright and pleasant children, to prattle, to creep, and to play with them?"

Epictetus on children   

"Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves."

FeNelon, Francois on children   

"When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief."

Fielding, Henry on children   

"Let the child's first lesson be obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt."

Franklin, Benjamin on children
4 fans of this quote   

"Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them."

Freud, Sigmund on children
4 fans of this quote   

"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 on children
4 fans of this quote   

"It is dangerous to confuse children with angels."

Fyfe, David on children   

"You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

Gibran, Kahlil on children
6 fans of this quote   

"We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on children
3 fans of this quote   

"If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on children   

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

Gray, Thomas on children   

"Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years."

Greene, Graham on children   

"We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children."

Greer, Germaine on children   

"I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex."

Handey, Jack on children
3 fans of this quote   

"Children always turn to the light."

Hare, David on children   

"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 on children   

"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 on children   

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on children
4 fans of this quote   

"A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on children   

"Children are our most valuable natural resource."

Hoover, Herbert Clark on children   

"Kids are wonderful, but I like mine barbecued."

Hope, Bob on children   

"Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other."

Howe, Edgar Watson on children   

"Children need love, especially when they don't deserve it."

Hulbert, Harold on children
4 fans of this quote