children

"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."

"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."

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

"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]]."