Children

"Shield children from everything false; guard them against worthless music; protect them from obscenity; protect them from false competitions; protect them from affirmation of selfhood. The more so, since it is necessary to inculcate a love for incessant learning. The muscles must not gain the upper hand over mind and heart."

"Monday's child is fair in face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for its living; And a child that's born on a Christmas day, Is fair and wise, good and gay."

"I said...how, and why, young children, were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning."

"Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter."

"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models."

"Every time a child says "I don’t believe in fairies" there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead."

"For children are the glory of marriage, the treasure of parents, the wealth of family life. They develop within their parents an entire cluster of virtues, such as paternal love and maternal affection, devotion and self-denial, care for the future, involvement in society, the art of nurturing. With their parents, children place restraints upon ambition, reconcile the contrasts, soften the differences, bring their souls ever closer together, provide them with a common interest that lies outside of them, and opens their eyes and hearts to their surroundings and for their posterity. As with living mirrors they show their parents their own virtues and faults, force them to reform themselves, mitigating their criticisms, and teaching them how hard it is to govern a person."

"Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it."

"Not a day passes, but I get a letter from a child. They come sometimes singly, sometimes in batches of 50 or 100. Entire classes, where school teachers have read my stories, have written to me. I answer every one personally. When I was a child I know how, if I had received a real letter from an author whose book I'd read, I would have been the happiest boy alive. And if I am to do any good in this world my highest ambition will be to make children happy."

"If you have kids you’re a slave to your genes. Just a conduit from past to future, from the primeval ocean to galactic empire."

"She was not really bad at heart, But only rather rude and wild: She was an aggravating child."

"Love for children is perhaps the most intense love; for it knows that it has nothing to hope for."

"Seven summers old Lovely Lyca told. She had wandered long Hearing wild birds' song."

"Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves... Aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish."

"There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone."

"We wore a web in childhood, A web of sunny air; We dug a spring in infancy Of water pure and fair. We sowed in youth a mustard seed; We cut an almond rod. We now are grown up to riper age: Are they withered in the sod?"

"Children become, while little, our delights, When they grow bigger, they begin to fright's."

"The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that."

"Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction."

"That they may not become too complacent or delighted in married life, he makes them distressed by the shortcomings of their partners, or humbles them through willful offspring, or afflicts them with the want or loss of children. But, if in all these matters he is more merciful to them, he shows them by diseases and dangers how unstable and passing all mortal blessings are, that they may not be puffed up with vain glory."

"A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents," and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.""

"So for the mother's sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child."

"[[w:Haec ornamenta mea|Haec ... ornamenta [sunt] mea]]."

"There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town—say in the , or the , or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife—who is as clean and ompact a little body as himself—have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child's portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about, is carefully preserved as a relic."

"Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.'"

"Nothing matters more to a child than a place to call home."

"Sometimes, you have to take a risk to give your kids what you want to give them."

"In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's."

"Nourish thy children, O thou good nurse; stablish their feet."

"If a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant ... If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed ... If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish."

"Adults make their children suffer for the sake of appearances, or to save themselves a little trouble. But it is the job of an adult, especially a mother, to help her child develop its natural abilities. It is a terrible wrong to deprive children of their freedom and rob them of their personalities. Let your children play as they please! To play freely on this earth is the one privilege nature has given to children. If they are allowed to play, they will grow up to be healthy human beings. Of this, at least, I am absolutely certain."

"Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don't read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children. What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic." As has already been pointed out by previous testimony, a little healthy, normal child has never been made worse for reading comic magazines. The basic personality of a child is established before he reaches the age of comic-book reading. I don’t believe anything that has ever been written can make a child overaggressive or delinquent. The roots of such characteristics are much deeper. The truth is that delinquency is the product of real environment, in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads. There are many problems that reach our children today. They are tied up with insecurity. No pill can cure them. No law will legislate them out of being. The problems are economic and social and they are complex. Our people need understanding; they need to have affection, decent homes, decent food."

"[T]o produce children without regard to consequences is to use procreative power irresponsibly, the more so when there is involved the imposition of one partner’s will upon the other."

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. 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. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."

"For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire’s return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share."

"An unrestrained production of children without realistic regard to God-given responsibilities involved in bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord may be as sinful and as selfish an indulgence of the lusts of the flesh as is the complete avoidance of parenthood."

"No child should ever be taken from or denied a loving home in the Orwellian name of "gender-affirming care.""

"It is terrible, absolutely mindless, ... Hundreds of children die every minute. But instead of giving them the basics of life we spend more than a million dollars a minute on arms. And all we buy is more and more insecurity, more and more instability."

"It seemed proper indeed to crowd the pages with children, for in real life they run all over; the world is covered thickly with the prints of their little footsteps, though, as a rule, books written for grown-up people are kept almost clear of them."

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."

"And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den."

"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee."

"And all your sons will be persons taught by Jehovah, and the peace of your sons will be abundant."

"Well you've cracked the sky Scrapers fill the air But will you keep on building higher 'til there's no more room up there? Will you make us laugh Will you make us cry? Will you tell us when to live Will you tell us when to die? I know we've come a long way We're changing day to day But tell me, where do the children play?"

"People now began bringing him young children for him to touch them, but the disciples reprimanded them. At seeing this, Jesus was indignant and said to them: "Let the young children come to me; do not try to stop them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such ones. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a young child will by no means enter into it." And he took the children into his arms and began blessing them, laying his hands on them."

"In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea... Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves."

"The children wear military uniforms and become used to handling the anti-aircraft artillery flak guns. Fifteen and sixteen-year-old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps the babies will also be employed. Total war!!"

"Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."

"Put a child in a den of thieves (but the child must not remain there so long that it is corrupted itself); that is, let it remain there only for a brief time. Then let it come home and tell everything it has experienced. You will note that the child, who is a good observer and has an excellent memory (as does every child), will tell everything in the greatest detail, yet in such a way that in a certain sense the important is omitted. Therefore someone who does not know that the child has been among thieves would least suspect it on the basis of the child's story. What is it, then, that the child leaves out, what is it that the child has not discovered? It is the evil. Yet the child's story about what it has seen and heard is entirely accurate. What then does the child lack? What is it that so often makes a child's story the most profound mockery of the adults? It is knowledge of evil, that the child lacks knowledge of evil, that the child does not even feel inclined to want to be knowledgeable about evil."

"... that kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly that today’s children can recognize 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants."

"All I know is Nanhoï's love. My son is my life. I believe in the magic of this love. He is the embodiment of life to me. The embodiment of beauty. Through him I'll find redemption and salvation. Then the wound in my soul – the wound I thought would never scar over – will stop bleeding."

"Every child, at birth, is the Universal Man. But, as it grows, we turn it into "a petty man." It should be the function of education to turn it again into the original "Universal Man.""

"C'est l'honneur de l'homme de retrouver dans ses enfants l'ingratitude qu'il eut pour ses pères, et de finir ainsi, comme Dieu, par un sentiment désintéressé."

"A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university ... This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad."

"I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature...but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind."

"A child's a plaything for an hour."

"All our children are outriders for a queendom not yet assured."

"I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads."

"We were all created to do as our parents have done, to beget and rear children. This is a duty which God has laid upon us, commanded, and implanted in us, as is proved by our bodily members, our daily emotions, and the example of all mankind."

"Children are a battle of a different sort ... A battle without banners or warhorns, but no less fierce ... As hard as birth can be, what comes after is even harder."

"Children hallow small things. A child is a priest of the ordinary, fulfilling a sacred office that absolutely no one else can fill. The simplest gesture, the ephemeral movement, the commonest object all become precious beyond words when touched, noticed, lived by one's own dear child."

"Children have rights that adults do not have, and these rights come before the rights of adults."

"With the birth of each child you lose two novels."

"The welfare of a child is not to be measured by money only, nor by physical comfort only."

"There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting out of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much confidence."

"Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk."

"Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos."

"Children have a fastidiousness that time is slow to cure. It is to be wondered, for example, whether if the elderly were half as hungry as children are they would yet find so many things at table to be detestable."

"Look around you. Everywhere. They are there. In every home — lurking in dark corners ... small, bi-pedal entities with almost human brains play their games in which adults are the pawns. They play and wait for the time when they will take over the world!"

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."

"Many of my children have worked out well. And I've had very little to do with it. I think they come into the world, to a certain extent, pre-made, and you just sit there and watch. ... It's been simply amazing to me as a parent to see how much is preordained. The shy baby is the shy adult. The booming, obnoxious, domineering baby is the booming, obnoxious, domineering adult. I've never found a way to fix that. ... I can be cheerful about it, but I can't fix it."

"A child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing."

"[C]hildren’s writing is so often so beautiful, because it’s so close to their own true tongues. On the other hand, it’s very boring because they have no experience in life."

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

"Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath."

"Look! Sons are an inheritance from Jehovah; the fruitage of the belly is a reward."

"Lo, children and the fruit of the womb: are an heritage and gift, that cometh of the Lord. Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant: even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate."

"A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment."

"But she didn't laugh. "When you have children," she said, staring at her glass, "you accept life. Do you accept life?""

"I thought you said people see what they expect to see."

"Neither of you have a need for children in your present personalities. You are almost finished with incarnations on the earth, so much so that the physical bodies will return completely and unfragmented upon your physical death. This is always the case in the final earth life. The physical property is left behind, no portion of it being carried on that plane through children."

"A close watch must be kept on the children, and they must never be left alone anywhere, whether they are in ill or good health. This constant supervision should be exercised gently and with a certain trustfulness calculated to make them think that one loves them, and that it is only to enjoy their company that one is with them. This will make them love their supervision rather than fear it."

"A person's lifeworm is a tangle of atomic worldlines. A braid. The dotty little atoms trace out smooth lines in spacetime: you are the pattern that these lines make up. There is no one single atom that is exclusively yours. I breathe an atom out, you breathe it in. Your garbage helps my tomatoes grow. And so the little spacetime threads weave us all together. The human race is a single vast tapestry, linked by our shared food and air. There are larger links as well: sperm, egg and umblilicus. Each family tree is an organic whole. Your spacetime body tapers back to the threads of mother's egg and father's sperm. And children, if you have them, are forever rooted in your flesh."

"My daughter, before she was sixteen, and especially before she was six, absolutely stunned me every day by the simple beauty and sweetness of her truth."

"And though she be but little, she is fierce."

"Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school."

"I believe the children are the future... Unless we stop them now!"

"Children are the keys of Paradise ... They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer."

"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults."

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."

"I honestly don't understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It's silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"You'll never know how I watched you From the shadows as a child You'll never know how it feels to be the one Who's left behind"

"You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one."

"So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him."

"If you really look at it, there's no way your life could be more messed up than by having a child who can't take care of themselves."

"I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed... That offends me deeply, because the world is a scary and horrifying place, and everyone's going to get old and die, if they're that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice. Children need horror because there are things they don't understand. It helps them to codify it if it is mythologized, if it's put into the context of a story, whether the story has a happy ending or not. If it scares them and shows them a little bit of the dark side of the world that is there and always will be, it's helping them out when they have to face it as adults."

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

"A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences."

"Train them to virtue; habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful knowledge. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones."

"Never despair of a child. The one you weep the most for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with the sweetest joys."

"Precious Saviour! come in spirit, and lay Thy strong, gentle grasp of love on our dear boys and girls, and keep these our lambs from the fangs of the wolf."

"Jesus was the first great teacher of men who showed a genuine sympathy for childhood. When He said "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," it was a revelation."

"As in the Master's spirit you take into your arms the little ones, His own everlasting arms will encircle them and you. He will pity both their and your simplicity; and as in unseen presence He comes again, His blessing will breathe upon you."

"Bring your little children to the Saviour. Place them in His arms. Devote them to His service. Born in His camp, let them wear from the first His colors. Taking advantage of timely opportunities, and with all tenderness of spirit, seek to endear them to the Friend of Sinners, the Good Shepherd of the lambs, the loving Guardian of the little children. And not only teach them, but govern them. And in order to govern them, govern yourselves."

"Children have more need of models than of critics."

"Let us be men with men, and always children before God; for in His eyes we are but children. Old age itself, in presence of eternity, is but the first moment of a morning."

"Johnny is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed as children are wont to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down."

"God has given you your child, that the sight of him, from time to time, might remind you of His goodness, and induce you to praise Him with filial reverence."

"We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?"

"The glorified spirit of the infant is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime."

"We are but children, the things that we do Are as sports of a babe to the Infinite view, That sees all our weakness, and pities it too. And oh! when aweary, may we be so blest As to sink, like an innocent child, to our rest, And feel ourselves clasped to the Infinite breast."

"Children's literature cannot be created without a close attachment with the children and they should be given moral education through entertainment."

"Just creation of children's literature is not enough, we will have to be aware of the wrong spellings and sentence structures. Otherwise, the children wouldn't be satisfied."

"Children's literature often bears clear evidence of its political leanings. Robinson Crusoe (written for adults but appropriated by younger readers) was about a white man who taught a black man how to behave as much as possible like a decent Englishman. The Jungle Book stories feature Mowgli, who learns the law of the jungle then dominates all of them."

"Children's literature is not political? What rubbish. If it reflects the society we live in, it is political. For years, the only local books about black children featured them living in a round mud hut in a folktale or wandering around chatting up lions and leopards. Then our authors were gradually allowed by our publishers to dream a little, to speak from the heart."

"Children, parents, teachers and schools must always be involved. It is important that good habits and the pleasure of reading can and must be instilled in us when we are young."

"The very first humans anthropomorphized the trees and the sun. It's just what we do. I don't think children's literature is teaching children to graft human emotions onto animals."

"Entertainment written for children was no less grisly. In 1815 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a compendium of old folktales that had gradually been adapted for children. Commonly known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the collection ranks with the Bible and Shakespeare as one of the bestselling and most respected works in the Western canon. Though it isn’t obvious from the bowdlerized versions in Walt Disney films, the tales are filled with murder, infanticide, cannibalism, mutilation, and sexual abuse—grim fairy tales indeed. Take just the three famous stepmother stories: During a famine, the father and stepmother of Hansel and Gretel abandon them in a forest so that they will starve to death. The children stumble upon an edible house inhabited by a witch, who imprisons Hansel and fattens him up in preparation for eating him. Fortunately Gretel shoves the witch into a fiery oven, and “the godless witch burned to death in a horrible way.” Cinderella’s stepsisters, when trying to squeeze into her slippers, take their mother’s advice and cut off a toe or heel to make them fit. Doves notice the blood, and after Cinderella marries the prince, they peck out the stepsisters’ eyes, punishing them “for their wickedness and malice with blindness for the rest of their lives.” Snow White arouses the jealousy of her stepmother, the queen, so the queen orders a hunter to take her into the forest, kill her, and bring back her lungs and liver for the queen to eat. When the queen realizes that Snow White has escaped, she makes three more attempts on her life, two by poison, one by asphyxiation. After the prince has revived her, the queen crashes their wedding, but “iron slippers had already been heated up for her over a fire of coals.... She had to put on the red-hot iron shoes and dance in them until she dropped to the ground dead.” As we shall see, purveyors of entertainment for young children today have become so intolerant of violence that even episodes of the early Muppets have been deemed too dangerous for them."

"I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. Like all our evil propensities, the imagination will out. But if it is rejected and despised, it will grow into wild and weedy shapes; it will be deformed. At its best, it will be mere ego-centered daydreaming; at its worst, it will be wishful thinking, which is a very dangerous occupation when it is taken seriously."

"Children's literature is a key educational source in creating an inclusive culture."

"A 4-year-old reading a book about a talking bear, or in my case a bear that hugs trees, it's an innocent little fantasy. If a child loves picking up that book every night, I think the positive outweighs the negative - if there is any negative. I'd strongly argue there isn't."

"What mostly attracts me to children's literature is how complex it is We often have a misconception that children's literature is literature for adults with simpler language, and happy endings."

"Really, children's literature brings their fears and frustrations to life."

"This is one reason why children's literature is so important: it often begins with laughter."

"One of the most common epithets for children's books is 'fun'. It suggests a certain luxurious triviality: what's fun is all that's not serious. And certainly, many books are just that: escapes from the serious business of living."

"This is one of the triumphs of kids' books in general: a bonding in incomprehensibility."

"But all in all, the fun of children's books is often altruistic: it is a lesson in how to cope with an imperfect and often impenetrable life - and, as we chortle together, a form of intimacy."

"Imagine, for a moment, this scenario: a 200-meter footrace in which the starting blocks of some competitors are placed 75 meters behind the others. Barring an Olympic-caliber runner, those who started way in front will naturally win. Now, think of that as an analogy for the predicament that American kids born in poverty face through no fault of their own. They may be smart and diligent, their parents may do their best to care for them, but they begin life with a huge handicap. As a start, the nutrition of poor children will generally be inferior to that of other kids. No surprise there, but here’s what’s not common knowledge: A childhood nutritional deficit matters for years afterwards, possibly for life. Scientific research shows that, by age three, the quality of childrens’ diets is already shaping the development of critical parts of young brains like the and in ways that matter. That’s worth keeping in mind because four million American kids under age six were poor in 2018, as were close to half of those in families headed by single women. Indeed, the process starts even earlier. Poor mothers may themselves have nutritional deficiencies that increase their risk of having babies with . That, in turn, can have long-term effects on children’s health, what level of education they reach, and their future incomes since the quality of nutrition affects , concentration, and cognitive capacity. It also increases the chances of having and experiencing mental health problems."

"My dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief."

"Our country's healthcare spending is less than one per cent of GDP, even though the WHO recommends 6pc. And only 4pc of Pakistani children receive a 'minimally acceptable diet'. These poor healthcare and standards expose the flaws of the prime minister's reasoning that our youthful demography will protect us against the worst of the pandemic; malnourishment can hardly boost immunity."

"The child must be prayed for. Those children that come with curses, that slip into the world, just in a moment of inadvertence, because that could not be prevented - what can we expect of such progeny? Mothers of America, think of that! Think in the heart of your hearts, are you ready to be women? Not any question of race or country, or that false sentiment of national pride. Who dares to be proud in this mortal life of ours, in this world of woes and miseries? What are we before this infinite force of God? But I ask you the question tonight: Do you all pray for the children to come? Are you thankful to be mothers, or not? Do you think that you are sanctified by motherhood, or not? Ask that of your minds. If you do not, your marriage is a lie, your womanhood is false, your education is superstition, and your children, if they come without prayer, will prove a curse to humanity."

"A direful death indeed they had That would put any parent mad But she was more than usual calm She did not give a singel dam."

"The most devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itselfe cant endure."

"To-day I pronounced a word which should never come out of a lady’s lips it was that I called John a Impudent Bitch."

"I am going to turn over a new life and am going to be a very good girl and be obedient to Isa Keith, here there is plenty of gooseberries which makes my teeth watter."

"I hope I will be religious again but as for regaining my character I despare."

"An annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of"

"Sentiment is what I am not acquainted with."

"My dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me."

"O lovely O most charming pug Thy graceful air and heavenly mug ... His noses cast is of the roman He is a very pretty weoman I could not get a rhyme for roman And was oblidged to call it weoman."