Motivational Quotes

Children

Our children change us... whether they live or not.

- Lois McMaster Bujold

Best Quotes about Children

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

Peter Ustinov

Hugs can do great amounts of good -- especially for children.

Diana, Princess of Wales

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

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

Bruce Barton

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Oscar Wilde

A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.

Vaughan, Bill

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

Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.

Saki

We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open.

Edwards, Harry

10.

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

Crane, Monta

11.

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.

Phyllis Diller

12.

The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.

Wilbur, Ray L.

13.

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

Ruskin, John

14.

Birds in their little nest agree; and 'Tis a shameful sight, when children of one family fall out, and chide, and fight.

Watts, Isaac

15.

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

Updike, John

16.

What you don't know takes a lot of explaining to the children.

17.

Our children change us... whether they live or not.

Lois McMaster Bujold

18.

Little girl's definition of conscience: Something that makes you tell your mother before your brother or sister does.

19.

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

20.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

21.

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

22.

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

Pope, Alexander

23.

A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone.

Harrison, Jane

24.

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

25.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.

Jameson, Anna

26.

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

27.

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

Abbott, Lyman

28.

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. [Proverbs 22:15]

Bible

29.

A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants.

Kraus, Karl

30.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Tracy, Brian

31.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Behn, Aphra

32.

Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

33.

Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.

Cosby, Bill

34.

We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.

Tauscher, Stacia

35.

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.

Chase, Alexander

36.

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

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

37.

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

Lois McMaster Bujold

38.

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

39.

Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.

Cox, Marcelene

40.

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

Fran Lebowitz

41.

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

La Bruyere, Jean De

42.

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

43.

Children suck the mother when they are young and the father when they are old.

Proverb, English

44.

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

Proverb

45.

Children need models rather than critics.

Joubert, Joseph

46.

There are few places outside his own play where a child can contribute to the world in which he finds himself. His world: dominated by adults who tell him what to do and when to do it --benevolent tyrants who dispense gifts to their good subjects and punishment to their bad ones, who are amused at the cleverness of children and annoyed by their stupidities.

Spolin, Viola

47.

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

Daniel Raeburn

48.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child.

Curie, Madame Marie

49.

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

Dick Cavett

50.

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.