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children quotes

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“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.” Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book
“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not...” Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Only the children know what they are looking for . . . They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.” Stephen King, The Shining
“The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.” Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides
“Hair is vitally personal to children. They weep vigorously when it is cut for the first time; no matter how it grows, bushy, straight or curly, they feel they are being shorn of a part of their personality.” Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“All grown-ups were once children—although few of them remember it.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other.” Francis Bacon, The Essays of Francis Bacon
“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, Great Expectations
“The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.” G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
“it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them—especially as against the rivals, other children, and first and foremost as against their brothers and sisters.” Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
“The visions we offer our children shape the future.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” Heraclitus, On Nature
“Therein do men from children nothing differ.” William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for, when they scrawl their names in the snow.” Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
“Strange children should smile at each other and say, 'Let's play.'” F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to...” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“Real children don’t go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.” Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
“When you’re a child you’re the center of everything. Everything happens for you.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children; and here was one who was worshipping a stone!” William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
“They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
“Preparing for the future must begin, as always, with our children. We need to set for them new and more rigorous goals.” Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address
“Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“It is again a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but remembering and recalling them.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old Age
“There is more to do. We need to prepare our children to read and succeed in school with improved Head Start and early childhood development programs.” George W. Bush, State of the Union Address
“I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children—lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus.” Marilyn Monroe, My Story
“When a child first catches adults out . . . his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“I really felt ashamed to take advantage of the ingenuousness or grateful feeling of the child for the purpose of gratifying my curiosity. I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.” Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
“We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance on in our steads.” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
“I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.” Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography
“The country is the place for children, and if not the country, a city small enough so that one can get out into the country.” Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography
“Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“Now, all the general propositions favouring freedom I had either imbibed at my father’s knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek were suddenly embodied in the worshippers and their children and illuminated by their smiles.” Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power
“They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut...” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books.” Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography
“His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.” Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
“All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care.” Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
“Kids, she says. When they’re little, they believe everything you tell them about the world. As a mother, you’re the world almanac and the encyclopedia and the dictionary and the Bible, all rolled up together. But after they hit some magic...” Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
“As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn't mean they are dumber than you.” Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book
“when grown-ups told you something wouldn’t hurt it almost always did.” Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Related topics

parents remembrance men God trust adults love courage future personality questions innocence parenting gravity attachment burden existence knowledge beauty religion

Related authors

Theodore Roosevelt (3)
Charles Dickens (3)
John Steinbeck (3)
Neil Gaiman (3)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (3)
Frank Zappa (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
George R. R. Martin (2)
Orson Scott Card (2)
Arthur Schopenhauer (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
William Shakespeare (1)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1)
Stephen King (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Marilyn Monroe (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
Chuck Palahniuk (1)
Ronald Reagan (1)
Terry Pratchett (1)

Related sources

The Catcher in the Rye (1)
The Little Prince (3)
East of Eden (3)
Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography (3)
The Real Frank Zappa Book (2)
State of the Union Address (2)
Kafka on the Shore (2)
A Storm of Swords (2)
Ender's Game (2)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
Studies in Pessimism (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
The Essays of Francis Bacon (1)
Much Ado About Nothing (1)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1)
On Nature (1)
Great Expectations (1)
My Story (1)
The Blind Assassin (1)
Hogfather (1)