Motivational Quotes

Children

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.

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Children

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Gore Vidal

What the vast majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

Landers, Ann

I am amused when goody-goodies proclaim, from the safety of their armchairs, that children are naturally prejudice-free, that they only learn to "hate" from listening to bigoted adults. Nonsense. Tolerance is a learned trait, like riding a bike or playing the piano. Those of us who actually live among children, who see them in their natural environment, know the truth: Left to their own devices, children will gang up on and abuse anyone who is even slightly different from the norm.

Josh Lieb

It takes three to make a child.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.

Dick Cavett

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

Menninger, Karl A.

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Decter, Midge

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.

Dobson, Dr. James C.

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

Waitley, Denis

10.

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world.

Hazzard, Shirley

11.

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.

Roosevelt, Theodore

12.

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.

Gibran, Kahlil

13.

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

Meyer, Adolph

14.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

Anatole Broyard

15.

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.

Rich, Adrienne

16.

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.

Wilder, Thornton

17.

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Jackson, Jesse

18.

Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children's eyes.

Lawana Blackwell

19.

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

Nash, Ogden

20.

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

Ovid

21.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Behn, Aphra

22.

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.

Canetti, Elias

23.

But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

24.

The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions --an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.

W. Somerset Maugham

26.

That's the funny thing about havin'a kid. They come with their own set of problems; make everything else you were worried about seem kinda silly.

Greg Garcia

27.

Who is not attracted by bright and pleasant children, to prattle, to creep, and to play with them?

Epictetus

28.

Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say.

Dyer, Wayne

29.

The child is the father of the man.

Wordsworth, William

30.

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

Auden, W. H.

31.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.

Jones, Franklin P.

32.

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

Ruskin, John

33.

You see much more of your children once they leave home.

Ball, Lucille

34.

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

Proverb

35.

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.

Abbott, Lyman

36.

Children are the keys of paradise.

Stoddard, Richard Henry

37.

Facing a mirror you see merely your own countenance; facing your child you finally understand how everyone else has seen you.

Daniel Raeburn

38.

For many children, joy comes as the result of mining something unique and wondrous about themselves from some inner shaft.

Cottle, Thomas J.

39.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

Robertson Davies

40.

Ruskin, John

41.

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.

42.

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.

Orwell, George

43.

There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone, or forbid your children to do it.

Crane, Monta

44.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Novalis

45.

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.

Meynell, Alice

46.

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

47.

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

48.

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

Plomp, John

49.

Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.