Quotes about children

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.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.

— Groucho Marx

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

— Margaret Mead

What is done to children, they will do to society.

— Karl A. Menninger

A little less worry over the child and a bit more concern about the world we make for the child to live in.

— Adolph Meyer

A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far.

— Alice Meynell

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.

— Maria Montessori

We've had bad luck with our kids -- they've all grown up.

— Christopher Morley

He continued to be an infant long after he ceased to be a prodigy.

— Robert Moses

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

— Clark Moustakas

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.

— Ogden Nash

Where children are, there is the golden age.

— Novalis

Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.

— Austin O'Malley

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.

— George Orwell

How little is the promise of the child fulfilled in the man.

— Ovid

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

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Pablo Picasso

You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

— John Plomp

The wildest colts make the best horses.

— Plutarch

If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.

— Roman Polanski

Children are living jewels dropped unsustained from heaven.

— Robert Pollok

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

— Alexander Pope

There is not so much comfort in having children as there is sorrow in parting with them.

— Proverb

Children and drunks always speak the truth.

— Proverb

A rich child often sits in a poor mothers lap.

— Proverb

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.

— Chinese Proverb

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

— English Proverb

Better a snotty child than his nose wiped off.

— English Proverb

Children are poor men's riches.

— John Ray

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

— Adrienne Rich

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.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

The distinctive character of a child is to always live in the tangible present.

— John Ruskin

In great countries, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents want to make them into adults. In vile countries, the children are always wanting to be adults and the parents want to keep them children.

— John Ruskin

Children see in their parents the past, their parents see in them the future; and if we find more love in the parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad but natural. Who does not entertain his hopes more than his recollections.

— John Ruskin

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.

— Samuel Rutherford

Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.

— Saki

Adults are obsolete children.

— Dr. Seuss

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

— William Shakespeare

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.

— William Shakespeare

In all our efforts to provide advantages we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured, and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history.

— Eda J. Le Shan

You save an old man and you save a unit; but save a boy, and you save a multiplication table.

— Gypsy Smith

What's more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?

— Logan Pearsall Smith

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mother and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

— Benjamin Spock

There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it --benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.

— Viola Spolin

Children are the keys of paradise.

— Richard Henry Stoddard

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.

— Jonathan Swift

We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.

— Stacia Tauscher

No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

— Jeremy Taylor

It needs courage to let our children go, but we are trustees and stewards and have to hand them back to life--to God. As the old saying puts it: What I gave I have. We have to love them and lose them.

— Alfred Torrie

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

— Brian Tracy

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

— Harry S Truman

With children... it is a fact that most parents criticize children more than they laud or congratulate them. We tend to be quick to criticize, slow to praise. We should be careful to keep the praise and the expectations far ahead of the criticism.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

Kids use to ask where they came from, now they tell you where to go

— Source Unknown

Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

What you don't know takes a lot of explaining to the children.

— Source Unknown

The best way for a man to train up a child in the way he should go is to travel that way himself.

— Source Unknown

Too many parents are not on spanking terms with their children.

— Source Unknown

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

— John Updike

A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.

— Bill Vaughan

Never have children, only grand children.

— Gore Vidal

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

— Denis Waitley

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

— Isaac Watts

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

— Katharine Whitehorn

There's no point in being grown up if you cant be childish sometimes.

— Dr. Who

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

— Elie Wiesel

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

— Ray L. Wilbur

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

— Oscar Wilde

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Thornton Wilder

Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.

— Thornton Wilder

We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual.

— George F. Will

Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children. Now I have six children and no theories.

— John Wilmot

The child is the father of the man.

— William Wordsworth

Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.

— St.Francis Xavier

When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.

— Zig Ziglar

These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

— Charles Manson

A baby is born into this world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness. He sees the world with eyes not used yet. As he grows up, his parents lay all this stuff on him. They tell him, when they should be letting him tell them. Let the children lead you.

— Charles Manson

Every child should have an occasional pat on the back as long as it is applied low enough and hard enough. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1975

— Fulton John Sheen

Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.

— Haim Ginnott

All they need is the presence of their parents and they do the rest themself.

— Tadj Abelkader

All they need is the presence of their parents and they do the rest themselves.

— Tadj Abelkader

Children are the only innocent people in this world, they are the victims of our actions.

— Mahmoud El Hallab

Parents are role models in guiding, leading and teaching to their own children but never a maid.

— Kazeronnie Mak

Everyone has his own parents. No one comes from nowhere.

— Mak Kazeronnie

Children are our futures and hopes.

— Mak Kazeronnie

May the pain from the past be the fuel for the future.

— Brandon Oxford

LIFE IS LIKE A JOURNEY No matter how fast you drive, the traffic jam will make you wait for those you left. No matter how fast you drive, the traffic police will make you wait for those you left. No matter how fast you drive, the traffic lights will make you wait for those you left. No matter how fast or slow you drive, the accident will always happen accidentally, otherwise it won’t be called an accident.

— Kagabo Buranga Jacques

Care about your children. Just bless them instead of worrying, as every child is the little Buddha who helps his parents to grow up.

— Buddha

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.

— Garrison Keillor

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.

— Germaine Greer

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

— Isadora Duncan

Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

— Letty Cottin Pogrebin

A child is fed with milk and praise.

— Mary Lamb

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

— Maya Angelou

Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

— June Jordan