Children

Some people seem as if they can never have been children, and others seem as if they could never be anything else. ~~ George Dennison Prentice

A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children. ~~ Lyndon B. Johnson

If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract -- teach him to deduct. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

The educating of the parents is really the education of the child: children tend to live what is unlived in the parents, so it is vital that parents should be aware of their inferior, their dark side, and should press on getting to know themselves. ~~ Laurens van der Post

The 60s, of course, was the worst time in the world to try to bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on. ~~ Nancy Reagan

My boredom threshold is low at the best of times but I have spent more time being slowly and excruciatingly bored by children than any other section of the human race. ~~ Jill Tweedie

I think that we have created a new kind of person in a way. We have created a child who will be so exposed to the media that he will be lost to his parents by the time he is 12. ~~ David Bowie

There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world. ~~ Jean Baudrillard

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life. ~~ Saul Alinsky

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. ~~ Elias Canetti

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

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

For that's what a woman, a mother wants -- to teach her children to take an interest in life. She knows it's safer for them to be interested in other people's happiness than to believe in their own. ~~ Marguerite Duras

Being a child is horrible. It is slightly better than being a tree or a piece of heavy machinery but not half as good as being a domestic cat. ~~ Julie Burchill

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves. ~~ Abbe Dimnet

The barb in the arrow of childhood suffering is this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance. ~~ Olive Schreiner

Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage. ~~ Thomas Szasz

Our children are not going to be just our children -- they are going to be other people's husbands and wives and the parents of our grandchildren. ~~ Mary S. Calderone

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

If you treat a sick child like an adult and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well. ~~ Ruth Carlisle

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise. ~~ Cyril Connolly

Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best. ~~ Donald G. Smith

We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were. ~~ Mort Sahl

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave

When they think that their children are naïve. ~~ Ogden Nash (attributed)

If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child. ~~ Frederick Buechner

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it, or leave it. ~~ Buddy Hackett

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size. ~~ Unattributed

If any of us had a child that we thought was as bad as we know we are, we would have cause to start to worry. ~~ Will Rogers

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction. ~~ Annie Sullivan

Be careful to keep your promises to children, whether they be to reward or punish. A child soon learns whether a parent means to do what is promised. ~~ The Old Farmers Almanac [1893]

Acting childish seems to come naturally, but acting like an adult, no matter how old we are, just doesn't come easy to us. ~~ Edith Ann [Lily Tomlin]

I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. ~~ Isaac Newton

The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart. ~~ Mencius

What's done to children, they will do to society. ~~ Dr. Karl Menninger

Parents need to fill a child's bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can't poke enough holes in it to drain it dry. ~~ Alvin Price

Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded. ~~ Jess Lair

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble. ~~ Dennis Fakes

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home. ~~ Bill Cosby

When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood. ~~ Sam Ewing

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~~ Pierce Harris

A grownup is a child with layers on. ~~ Woody Harrelson

Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head. ~~ James E. Shapiro

Adults are obscene children. ~~ Dr. Seuss

A child becomes an adult when he realizes he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong. ~~ Thomas Szasz

Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child. ~~ Laurens Van Der Post

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. ~~ Kahlil Gibran

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise. ~~ Alden Nowlan

I doubt that imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. ~~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I have had enough experience in all my years, and have read enough of the past, to know that advice to grandchildren is usually wasted. ~~ Harry S Truman

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards -- the things we live by and teach our children -- are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings. ~~ Walt Disney (see Said Who)

[When asked by a reporter if she had any message for the children of America:] "No." ~~ Amy Carter

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There's nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional. ~~ George Bush

Only grown-ups have difficulty with childproof bottles. ~~ Joe Moore

Children despise their parents until the age of forty, when they suddenly become just like them, thus preserving the system. ~~ Quentin Crewe

Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it. ~~ Mark Twain

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society. ~~ Daniel Webster

Don't set your wit against a child. ~~ Jonathan Swift

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. ~~ Thomas Szasz

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life. ~~ Muriel Spark

A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children. ~~ Holbrook Jackson

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return. ~~ W. H. Auden

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. ~~ Oscar Wilde

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life. ~~ Robert Byrne

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

I must say the biggest lesson you can learn in life, or teach your children, is that life is not castles in the skies, happily ever after. The biggest lesson we have to give our children is truth. ~~ Goldie Hawn

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. ~~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If the children already born each have only two children themselves ... in twenty-seven to thirty-five years the population of the world will double. ~~ Tarzie Vittachi

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. ~~ Charles Lamb

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. ~~ Charles Dickens

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

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. ~~ John Lubbock

The child gets two confusing messages when a parent tells him which is the right fork to use, and then proceeds to use the wrong one. So does the child who listens to parents bicker and fuss, yet is told to be nice to his brothers and sisters. ~~ Dr. Michael Lewis

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. ~~ Clarence Darrow

The childhood shows the man,

As morning shows the day. ~~ John Milton

[Commenting on her offspring, probably especially Billy:] Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin." ~~ Lillian Carter

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well -- parent, child, brother, sister, intimate. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful. ~~ Margaret Mead

Childhood is that wonderful time when all you need to do to lose weight is take a bath. ~~ Joe Moore

Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years. ~~ Anthony Powell

The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence. ~~ Art Linkletter

People who've had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given. ~~ Sue Grafton

It's essential that a part of you not grow up. Childhood wonder gives us our spark and beauty. ~~ Robin Quivers

I have a high state of resentment for the conformity in this country. If you're not married and having children, it's like your life is empty or you're a communist meanie. ~~ Bill Maher

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. ~~ King Edward VIII

Children are like mosquitoes -- the moment they stop making noises you know they're getting into something. ~~ Unattributed

If you must hold yourself up to your children, hold yourself up as an object lesson and not as an example. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten. ~~ Doug Larson

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us. ~~ Jean de La Bruyere

If, in instructing a child, you are vexed with it for want of adroitness, try, if you have never tried before, to write with your left hand, and then remember that a child is all left hand. ~~ J. F. Boyse

Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child. ~~ Mary MacCracken

Education begins at home. You can't blame the school for not putting into your child what you don't put into him. ~~ Geoffrey Holder

We need to make a world in which fewer children are born, and in which we take better care of them. ~~ Dr. George Wald

Age does not make us childish, as they say.

It only finds us true children still. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. ~~ Franklin P. Adams

An elderly lady who was asked by a child if she were young or old said: "My dear, I have been young a very long time." ~~ Unattributed

Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life. ~~ Yiddish proverb

General Grant had a simple, childlike [recipe] for meeting life ... I am terribly afraid, but the other fellow is afraid, too. ~~ Sherwood Anderson

Youth is a wonderful thing; what a crime to waste it on children. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain. ~~ Martin Mull

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

Frankly, I think the chances of having a happy childhood while you're still a kid going through it are pretty slim. ~~ Edith Ann [Lily Tomlin]

It is worthwhile to take pains to make children kind to animals ... make children treat the cat and dog kindly, allow no teasing or harshness ... If they behave properly to animals, they are more likely to behave rightly to their brothers and sisters. ~~ The Old Farmer's Almanac [1882]

Ideas are like children -- no matter how much you admire someone else's, you can't help liking your own best. ~~ Unattributed

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. ~~ Ogden Nash

Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children. ~~ Mignon McLaughlin

There are some things children cannot know, because once they learn them, they are no longer children. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

... it's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting. ~~ Donald G. Smith

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in ... Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood. ~~ Peter Medawar

The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children. ~~ Louis Johannot

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle. ~~ Erma Bombeck

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood. ~~ Georges Bataille

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. ~~ W. H. Auden

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. ~~ James Baldwin

Adults are just children who earn money. ~~ Kenneth Branaugh