Motivational Quotes

Children

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

- Swift, Jonathan

Best Quotes about Children

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

If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed.

Burbank, Luther

It takes three to make a child.

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

Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other.

Howe, Edgar Watson

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.

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

There is a sanctity involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

Baldwin, James

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

John J. Plomp

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

Wilbur, Ray L.

10.

Ignorance... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Eliot, George

11.

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

12.

We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.

Greer, Germaine

13.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Novalis

14.

Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world.

Wiesel, Elie

15.

No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

Taylor, Jeremy

16.

My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.

Groucho Marx

17.

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

18.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

We do our children no favour by keeping them near, coddling them, or showing them off to adult visitors. Not that a nursemaid does not sometimes spoil them. But the greatest favour we can do our children is to give visible example of love and esteem to our spouse. As they grow up, they may then look forward to maturity so they too can find such love.

Eucharista Ward

20.

Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.

FeNelon, Francois

21.

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.

Norman Douglas

22.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Baldwin, James

23.

There's no point in being grown up if you cant be childish sometimes.

Who, Dr.

24.

Too many parents are not on spanking terms with their children.

25.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.

Angelou, Maya

26.

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

Pope, Alexander

27.

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

Menninger, Karl A.

28.

Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them.

Johnson, Lady Bird

29.

We inevitably doom our children to failure and frustration when we try to set their goals for them.

Lair, Dr. Jess

30.

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

31.

If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.

Montessori, Maria

32.

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

Whitehorn, Katharine

33.

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

Bachelard, Gaston

34.

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

Proverb, English

35.

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

Rutherford, Samuel

36.

A rich child often sits in a poor mothers lap.

Proverb

37.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home a pleasant atmosphere and let the air out of the tires.

Parker, Dorothy

38.

Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin

39.

It needs courage to let our children go, but we are trustees and stewards and have to hand them back to life--to God. As the old saying puts it: What I gave I have. We have to love them and lose them.

Torrie, Alfred

40.

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

Keillor, Garrison

41.

The child is the father of the man.

Wordsworth, William

42.

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.

Fielding, Henry

43.

A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

44.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

Anna Quindlen

45.

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

Oscar Wilde

46.

He continued to be an infant long after he ceased to be a prodigy.

Moses, Robert

47.

Don't throw away your friendship with your teenager over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.

Dobson, Dr. James C.

48.

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

Waitley, Denis

49.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

50.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

Wilde, Oscar