c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the side walk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your partner was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you
— Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals
As a children’s minister, I always believed that I was an evangelist, and at the end of the book, there’s a simple prayer that, whoever’s reading the book could accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior
— Soraya Diase Coffelt
Children are a gift from God.
— Anonymous
My mother once said that having a small child is like having a permanently drunk houseguest.
— Moira Hodgson
Her mindset will raise your children not her body or good looks
— claris mary
Do not raise your children the way your parents raised you
—  they were born for a different time.
In raising my children, I have lost my mind but found my soul.
— Lisa T. Shepherd
Reading helps children achieve their divine destinies
— Soraya Diase Coffelt
The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass......and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night. My God... what have we done?
— Neal Shusterman, UnDivided
Children are happy because they have the power of finding happiness in the simplest things.
— Debasish Mridha
This generation seems to see children as a financial burden and responsibility to be avoided.
— Francine Rivers, The Atonement Child
Despite how lonely or broken down you might feel, we need you with us helping to make the world better, kinder and safer, especially for the little girls coming up.
— Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl
For me, it’s not just about blessing my generation, I've done that already, I also have to be a father to the fatherless.
— Onyi Anyado
In wars, it is always the children who suffer the most.
— T.A. Uner, The Leopard Apocalypse
The children are the future, so, let's tell them about tomorrow's hope rather than yesterday's despair.
— Onyi Anyado
Give the child a taste of meditation by creating a climate and atmosphere of love, acceptance and silence.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
though they know in their adult hearts,even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bedfor his appalling behavior,that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,their wives are Dopey Dopeheadsand that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.
— Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris
Embrace, nurture, love and celebrate the child in self and others; because being child is being a future.
— Vishwas Chavan
Every child born into the world has a divine mission to fulfill.As the child grows into adulthood, he or she must act to fulfill the divine mission.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
It’s easy enough to get along with a loved and loving child—at least till you try to get him to do something.
— Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic's Notebook
Sure, I'd like a child of my own. I'd also like a laser pistol, that doesn't mean someone should give me one.
— Alex Bosworth, Chip Chip Chaw!
You know that person on your left shoulder who tells you that you can't do it or that you're not good enough? Tell that person to GET LOST!
— Dawn M. Plass, Oliver Axel's Adventures: Here I Am, World!
Teach children the value of work and to work hard at everything they do. The virtue of compassion and value of appreciation of the hard work of others too.
— Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul
Thus far we have been able to protect [our children] from the deep and enduring traumas that scar the minds and selves of so many of the patients I see. How — how?—can I make it always so?
— Christine Montross, Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
Parenting is a partnership. Loving each other has a big impact on your children.
— Elizabeth George
But that did no harm, and a sad young mind found a way to match things up with an antagonist. Now, just stand a child up against your body. How tall is it? Possibly only up to your hip. Still, a man,—or an animal thinking that it is a man—will slap, whip, or viciously yank an arm of so frail, so soft a tiny body! That is what I call a coward!! By golly! almost a criminal! If a tot is what you call naughty, (and no child voluntarily is,) why not lift that young body up onto your lap, and talk—don’t shout—about what it just did? Shouting gains nothing with a tot. Man can shout at Man, at dogs, and at farm animals; but a man who shouts at a child is, at that instant, sinking in his own muck of bullyism; and bullyism is a sin, if anything in this world is. Ah Youth! You glorious dawn of Mankind! You bright, happy, glowing morning Sun; not at full brilliancy of noon, I know, but unavoidably on your way! Youth! How I do thrill at taking your warm, soft hand; walking with you; talking with you; but, most important of all, laughing with you! That is Man’s pathway to glory. A man who drops blossoms in passing, will carry joy to folks along his way; a man who drops crumbs will also do a kindly act; but a man who drops kind words to a sobbing child will find his joy continuing for many a day; for blossoms will dry up; crumbs may blow away; but a kind word to a child may start a blossom growing in that young mind, which will so far surpass what an unkindly man might drop, as an orchid will surpass a wisp of grass. Just stop a bit and look back at your footprints along your past pathway. Did you put many humps in that soil which a small child might trip on? Did you angrily slam a door, which might so jolt a high-strung tot as to bring on nights and nights of insomnia? Did you so constantly snarl at it that it don’t want you around? In fact, did you put anything in that back-path of yours which could bring sorrow to a child? Or start its distrust of you, as its rightful guardian? If so, go back right now, man, and fix up such spots by kindly acts from now on. Or, jump into a pond, and don’t crawl out again!! For nobody wants you around!
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
All that did a big lot toward showing Youth that this big world is ‘not half bad,’ if adults will but watch, aid, and coach. And I will not stand anybody’s snapping at a child! Particularly a tiny tot. If you think that you must snap, snap at a child so big as to snap back. I don’t sanction ‘talking back’ to adults, but, ha, ha!
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
The most precious gift that you can give to the child is unconditional love and acceptance, which allows the child to discover his own inner being, his authentic self, his freedom to be himself.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
Your children need to know they are loved and safe. Everything else is adult business.
— Jeannine Lee
Now this is a most satisfactory and important thing to think about, for brutality will not,—cannot,—accomplish what a kindly disposition will; and, if folks could only know how quickly a “balky” child will, through loving and cuddling, grow into a charming, happy youth, much childish gloom and sorrow would vanish; for a man or woman who is ugly to a child is too low to rank as highly as a wild animal; for no animal will stand, for an instant, anything approaching an attack, or any form of harm to its young. But what a lot of tots find slaps, yanks and hard words for conditions which do not call for such harsh tactics! No child is naturally ugly or “cranky.” And big, gulping sobs, or sad, unhappy young minds, in a tiny body should not occur in any community of civilization. Adulthood holds many an opportunity for such conditions. Childhood should not.
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
The grace of birth is a divine.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’t speak that language. They didn’t learn it as children and they didn’t manage to pick it up as adults, either.
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
If you would only stop rating a child’s ability by your own; and try to find out just what ability a child has, our young folks throughout this big world would show a surprisingly willing disposition to try things which would bring your approbation. A child’s brain is an astonishing thing. It has, in its construction, an astounding capacity for absorbing what is brought to it; and not only to think about, but to find ways for improving it. It is today’s child who, tomorrow, will, you know, laugh at our ways of doing things.
— Ernest Vincent Wright, Gadsby
We guarantee rude emptiness for ourselves; later in life, when we treat children as - "empty buckets", today.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
Whatever I haven’t accomplished biologically obviously wasn't all that imperative.
— Alex Bosworth, Chip Chip Chaw!
When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it.
— Amy Poehler, Yes Please
An educated mind is nothing but the God-given mind of a child after his parents’ and his grandparents’ generation have got through molding it. We can’t help teaching you; you will ask that of us; but we are prone to teach you what we know, and I am going, now and again, to warn you:Remember we really don’t know anything. Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don’t know. That is your playground, bare and graveled, safe and unbreakable.
— Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I'd consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It takes everything I have not to swallow them whole.
— Amy Poehler, Yes Please
We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else.
— Trevor D. Richardson
Growing up in a household where something is terribly wrong, you feel the weight of that mysterious something even though it's unspoken. It eats at you. Confuses you. It leaves you wondering if your view of the world will ever make sense.
— Diane Chamberlain, The Silent Sister
There is no greater grief, than when a parent losses a child.
— Asa Don Brown
The biggest insult to any parent is a child that lives up to society standards and not his or her full potential.
— Unarine Ramaru
What should a good children’s book be like? If you ask me, I can tell you after thinking long and hard: It must be good.
— Astrid Lindgren
Children have but little charity for each other's defects.
— Mark Twain
I thought, Dad.Could I go to Vietnam for you?Dad, I could do it. I could do it for you. I could go to the places you fought. I could find the bits and pieces of your heart and soul left behind. If I bring them back, would it heal your pain?Dad, you gave me life. You made possible every good thing in my life. Why do you insist on fighting your nightmares and memories and monsters alone?You don’t have to do it alone, Dad. I could help you fight.Dad, you know what?I’ll be back before you find out so you don’t have to be afraid. I’m going to Vietnam.
— Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season
Children who have faith have distinctly different characteristics from those who don't. In fact, one of the main manifestations of a person with strong faith is the ability to give—not just in terms of money or possessions, but also time, love, and encouragement.
— Stormie Omartian, The Power of a Praying Parent
If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the k nowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise.
— Urie Bromfenbrennner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design
Children are particularly literary, for they say what they feel not what someone has taught them to feel.
— Fernando Pessoa
Children are the most reasonable about discipline. When they tell you not to do something, it's always because they know why.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
And why is it that so many years later it is so easy to distinguish the bullies from their prey? Adult bodies surrounding the children of long ago. The years have changed nothing.
— Leila Aboulela, Coloured Lights
No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.
— Zia Haider Rahman
Make no mistake. I take these children seriously. It is not possible to see too much in them, to overindulge your causal gift for the study of character. It is all there, in full force, charged waves of identity and being. There are no amateurs in the world of children
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
The seed of a blue lupin will usually produce a blue lupin. But the seed of a blue-eyed man may produce a brown-eyed bore...especially if his wife has a taste for gigolos.
— Beverley Nichols, Down the Garden Path
When a woman miscarries, the experience of the father is often forgotten. But men grieve pregnancy loss too...
— Various
Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but children are better than books.
— Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
109They all were children as it were" she saith. Tiring, complaining, and with any colorful thing they are charmingly possessed. Have a second look at their faces; you might be having other things ought to be expressed.
— Bela Anĝelo
In the shimmering ignorance of illiteracy of compassion and faith the stoic desire of loving without temporal gains rules the hearts and minds in deeds and care
— meenakshi ahlawat
It's all your fault, Mother,' said Larry austerely; 'you shouldn't have brought us up to be so selfish.' 'I like that!' exclaimed Mother. 'I never did anything of the sort!' 'Well, we didn't get as selfish as this without some guidance,' said Larry.
— Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.
— Mignon McLaughlin
Children imitate their parents, employees their managers.
— Amit Kalantri
NEVER EVER STAY IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR CHILDREN. That is the worst thing one can ever do. It is better for a child to live with one Good Parent than two frustrated,screwed up ones.
— Rachitha Cabral
The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.
— G.K. Chesterton
The best way to encourage your children is to let them know you are praying for them.
— Jim George, A Dad After God's Own Heart: Becoming the Father Your Kids Need
Spanking a child is about the parent not the child. The child will learn more from positive correction than physical manipulation.
— Asa Don Brown
Katie soon learned there was a problem with hope.
— Carla H. Krueger, Sleeping with the Sun
The birth of a child is divine miracle.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It’s never too early to begin pointing your little ones’ souls heavenward.
— Elizabeth George, A Mom After God's Own Heart Devotional
Listen in close, Wall Street Conquistadors, you’re spreading like vapor up through people’s floors, you’re moving en masse under the cracks of our doors and grabbing our children to work in your stores, feeding the needy to make them your whores, but you need to remember the grave you’re digging is yours.
— Trevor D. Richardson, Dystopia Boy: The Unauthorized Files
To retreat into oneself and meet nobody for hours on end—that is what one must be able to attain. To be alone, as one was alone as a child, when the grown-ups walked about involved in things which seemed great and important, because big people looked so busy and because one could comprehend nothing of their doings. And when one day one realises that their affairs are paltry, their professions benumbed and no longer connected with life, why not still like a child look upon them as something strange from without the depth of one's own world, regarding them from the immunity of one's own loneliness, which is itself work, position and profession? Why desire to exchange a child's wise incomprehension for self-defence and disdain? Incomprehension is loneliness, but self-defence and disdain are participation in that from which one is trying to separate oneself by these means.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Racism, Dr. Sam. I worry for my kids about racism. Racism doesn't appear to take holidays or time off. What can I do about this stuff?
— Allan Dare Pearce, Hitler Burns Detroit
She will not plant the seed in their mind, that a parent is capable of abandoning her children, of saying to them You are not enough. For Pari, the children and Eric have always been enough. They always will be.
— Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
It takes maturity to be able to laugh like a child again.
— Moffat Machingura, Life Capsules
We must trust that what we're doing has a purpose. We must realize that we're not here to make kids conform or perform, but that we're here to help them to develop their own unique skills and talents, not the ones we want them to have or the ones we think they should have.
— Tom Walsh
Because Christ doesn’t scream to get our attention, we have to find places and times that are quiet. We can look for Him throughout the day in a smile or the sunlight through a cloud. He’s there in a baby’s face—every time in a baby’s face.
— Toni Sorenson
This shows you that even mistakes are sometimes valuable, so do not be hard on grown-up people if they are wrong sometimes.
— E. Nesbit
Parent should never forget the great excitement they felt for the birth of a new born into the world.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
His child. His child with Caroline. Their child. After the things he’d said to her this morning, this would likely be their only child. Would it be a little bespectacled boy who wore his clothes haphazardly and followed his papa around holding a magnifying glass in one hand and notebook in the other? Or would it be a beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl who was always getting into trouble for dragging the hem of her skirt through the mud while she dug around in the flowerbeds? He smiled at mental image. Most men wished for a boy, but he’d gladly take a little girl who was just like Caroline.
— Rose Gordon
These young people are going to change the world.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Hitler Burns Detroit
Who's Johnnie Walker?""It's a drink. For grown-ups.""Is it nice?""Makes you drunk.""What's it like being drunk?" "Like being awake and asleep at the same time.""Sounds nice." "It was meant to sound terrible," he said looking down his glasses at her. "You get sick and stagger around. People actually vomit sometimes.
— Tom Rachman, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
Children are something, don't ya think? " she rarely spoke in that way, the freaky speculative way." I mean, you fall in love and as a result, little people are running around 
— Jebreel Nahaary
There is no substitute for your impassioned prayers on behalf of your children
— Jim George, A Dad After God's Own Heart: Becoming the Father Your Kids Need
A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done, cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
What we learn in childhood is carved in stone. What we learn as adults is carved in ice.
— David Kherdian
Kids are important. The most important thing.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Hitler Burns Detroit
I will always take your part, Bee. Right or wrong. That is why you must always take care to be right, lest you make your father a fool.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin
From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen.
— Stephen McCauley, Insignificant Others
When I encourage someone, I see it as an investment in their resilience.
— Steve Karagiannis
children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people
— Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
You and I. Hand in hand. An endless story of love. A love that grew in me for 9 months and only grows bigger each day.You and I. Hand in hand. An endless journey. Countless steps. One destination - your happiness.You and I. Hand in hand. My heart and blood. I'll share it all - take it - my whole life is you.
— Veronika Jensen
As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked.
— Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
The little kids by the water threw their hands in the air and squealed, chasing each other in circles.It was hard to believe that I’d ever been that small. That young. That happy and clueless. They hadpain ahead. Heartbreak. Loss. They didn’t know and I didn’t want them to – but at the same time, Ihated that I hadn’t known. I’d taken everything for granted – my mother, my friends in Alexandria,playing hockey. I dreamed about the future because that’s what people persuade you to do whenyou’re a kid, but that’s the biggest lie of all – that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking cluewhat’s coming and neither do they
— Tammara Webber, Breakable
We were no longer, technically, children although in many ways I am quite sure that we were. Childish has become a term of contempt. "Don't be childish, darling." "I hope to Christ I am. Don't be childish yourself." It is possible to be grateful that no one that you would willingly associate with you say, "Be mature. Be well-balanced, be well-adjusted." Africa, being as old as it is, makes all people except the professional invaders and spoilers into children. No one says to anyone in Africa, "Why don't you grow up?" . . . Men know that they are children in relation to the country and, as in armies, seniority and senility ride close together. But to have the heart of a child is not a disgrace. It is an honor. A man must comport himself as a man. . . . But it is never a reproach that he has kept a child's heart, a child's honesty and a child's freshness and nobility.
— Ernest Hemingway, True At First Light: A Fictional Memoir
We watch them grow, with sadness and amazement and fear. We have stepped away, but not entirely away. They know this. They sense it. We are no longer here, but we are not yet gone. And we will be like that for the rest of their lives.We watch, and they surprise us.We watch, and they surpass us.
— David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
Dangers were no more than odd imaginings, like ghost stories that children made up to frighten one another: things that couldn't possibly happen.
— Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
You're bigger than I remember," she said stupidly."You too," he said. "I also remember that you were beautiful.""Memory does play tricks on us.""No. Your face is the same, but I don't remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let's go out into the lake.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Of course our most important role as a parent is to have our children know that they are loved and worthy. Even more importantly, it's to help them discover, and fan the flames of whatever it is that they are enthusiastic about!
— Steve Karagiannis
Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.
— Paul Russell, The Coming Storm
But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest
— Hermann Hesse
At first parenthood was as I had expected, exhausting, sometimes heinous, and occasionally divine. I held my children close enough to feel them breathe, laugh, swallow.
— Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue
Netiquette is overdelicate because kids use the internet. Adult content forms are triplicate, ASL. NetworkEtiquette.net
— David Chiles
Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
My father believes with his entire soul that the meek shall inherit the earth. My children will inherit the earth but they will not be meek.
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
Our children belong to God. We're only given them on loan from heaven. Sometimes God calls them home sooner tan we expected.
— Scarlet Wilson, English Girl in New York
If you tell an eight-year-old she has a talent for something, she'll never give it a rest.
— Lauren Leto, Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere
In a country where children are unhappy, everyone is unhappy!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
So many people think that they are not gifted because they don’t have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesn’t fall under the creative arts category—writing, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talents—being an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.
— Shannon L. Alder
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself--that is the first duty of the educator.
— Maria Montessori
We try to bring up our children so that they are protected from the world's evils, only to find we've raised a pack of innocents who seem to be about to stumble into them at every turn just from sheer stupidity!
— Samuel R. Delany, Tales of Nevèrÿon
The increasingly thoughtful child can see the whole horribly upset world and would be understandably totally bewildered and deeply troubled by it
— Jeremy Griffith, Is It To Be: Terminal Alienation or Transformation For The Human Race
What is childhood without stories? And how will children fall in love with stories without bookstores? You can't get that from a computer.
— Sarah Jio, Goodnight June
Play like a child, because you are still that beautiful child.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
I hang around kids so people will assume when I act like one it's because I'm babysitting.
— Richelle E. Goodrich
The world doesn't owe you anything because you're in it, but you owe yourself the world because it is in you.
— Kat Kaelin, TOOL OF THE WILLOW FAIRY: Love Will Find A Way
Our children form a large part of our Immortality Project. This is one of the reasons a child’s death cuts so deep; some of the future dies with them. Through them and their descendants, part of us lives on forever, just as it does in the friends we touch and the ripples our actions cause in the world. All these effects are conscripts, earthwork defences against the finality of extinction.
— John Dolan, A Poison Tree
Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with the greater variety of information that is coming forward than you did. They deliberately are coming forth into this environment where there is more to contemplate. This generation gap that you are talking about, it has ever been thus. Each new generation, every new individual, that comes forth, is doing with you having prepared a different platform for them to proceed from. There is this thing that gets in the way of that that says, "I'm the parent. I got here first. I know more than you do." From the children's perspective, and from the purity of their Nonphysical perspective, that they are saying is, "You're the parent. You got here first. You prepared a platform that I am leaping off from - and my leap will be beyond anything that yo have ever known.
— Abraham Hicks
Parents in the early half of the twentieth century were primarily concerned with the development of character in their children. They wanted to be certain that their children were ready to cope with adversity, for it was surely coming to them one day whether in personal or national life. The development of character involves self-discipline and often sacrifice of one's own desires for the good of self and others. Montessori education, developed in this historical period, reflects this emphasis on the formation of the child's character. However, parents today are more likely to say their primary wish for their children is that they be happy. In pursuit of this goal they indulge their children, often unconsciously, to a degree that is startling to previous generations. All parents need to remember that true happiness comes through having character and discipline, and living a life of meaningful contribution -- not by having and doing whatever you wish.
— Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three
Something must have happened, your mother speculated. In her mind a woman with no child could only be explained by vast untrammeled calamity. Maybe she just doesn't like children.Nobody likes children, Yunior, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.
— Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her
Torture when inflicted on childrenbecomes indefensible. Even among those who believe that torture is a defensiblepractice to extract information, the case for inflicting pain and abuse upon childrenproves impossible to support.
— Henry A. Giroux, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism
Showing charity towards others is the biggest lesson we canteach our children to guide them in their future on this planet. 
— Simin Hashemizadeh
I do not have money to invest nor i have studied finance to be an investment banker but i would like to be an investor in the society
—  by investing my love care and compassion in my children i think there will be a bank of bankable people
The streets are silent / The playgrounds are still /The noise has moved elsewhere / Into our homes / Into our hearts / It’s been too long /Children are not where they belong /The streets, the playgrounds and the song /Have been waiting for too long…
— Daya Kudari
Literature has the ability to open up a whole new world to children, but we need to have a share in helping them to find that door and open it with them. Let’s set the example and help to foster this love of reading in our little ones.
— Carmela Dutra
God sends little children to speak and act for him. In their simplicity and naivety they say and do things that we adults never would, but which can reveal deep truths about the way the world should be, if we only would have ears to hear and eyes to see...
— Phil Steer, As a Child: God's Call to Littleness
Children play from the library of their imagination and it feels real to them.
— S. E. Entsua-Mensah
Our culture of violence is an incubator, where our children are the crop of future techno-warrior killers.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Children playing while in the background the TV blares with screams, gunfire and rape-murder scenes. It seeps in.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
You shouldn't be in here!
— Evelyn Winters, The Little Big Clockmaker
The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart.
— Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness
I talk to children like adults and to adults like children.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Because of the times, and because the child has been living in a world filled with every kind of thrill and adventure, it is safe to assume that he is not interested in the same type of radio that amused him before the war.
— Judith C. Waller, Radio: The Fifth Estate
The average American child, by age eighteen, is estimated to have seen eighteen thousand murders and two hundred thousand acts of violence on television. The “death play” of popular video games is accelerating these numbers to ever-higher levels.
— Richard J. Borden, Ecology and Experience: Reflections from a Human Ecological Perspective
DNA, DNA, DNA. You never ever deny it, fool. I thought he is my cold enemy. When he died, he became my father. Says Bhutta (Biography)
— M.K. Bhutta
Children with disabilities are stronger than we know, they fight the battles that most will never know.
— Misti Renea Neely
I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.'...We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
When a child is forced to prove himself as capable, results are often disastrous. A child needs love, acceptance, and understanding. He is devastated when confronted with rejection, doubts, and never ending testing.
— Virginia M. Axline
I will teach my daughter to color outside the lines, to make mistakes, to take risks, and not be afraid to fail. I will teach her that even when the world tries to knock her down the best revenge is getting up and forging ahead. I will teach her to be brave enough to be different, to stand up for what's right. To never quiet her voice to make someone else feel comfortable. Because no one remembers the person that fits in. It's the one who stands out that people won't be able to forget.
— Nancy Arroyo Ruffin, Letters to My Daughter: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems about Love, Pride, and Identity
Too many times I'd left him reaching for me, from a babysitter's arms. "Am I still a mother?" I asked myself... What parts of the day could I cut out and still give him enough? Paul never asked himself that. He thought he was a great dad.
— Mona Simpson, My Hollywood
In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying…the child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginning, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is "fair". Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being "selfish" and "greedy". Later in life he will thank you.
— Joseph Sobran
Kids who are good at traditional school—repeating rote concepts and facts on a test—can fall apart in a situation where that isn’t enough. Programming rewards the experimental, curious mind.
— Ketil Moland Olsen
We must have the love that exists among children, for with them love rules without any special purpose.
— Eberhard Arnold, Salt and Light: Talks and Writings on the Sermon on the Mount
A godly mother loves God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, and teaches her children to do the same.
— Elizabeth George, One-Minute Inspirations for Women
God has called us to something vastly bigger than our happiness or that of our children.
— Gloria Furman, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms
Animals in children’s literature always have a soul life because children perceive animals as having souls.
— Linda Bender
I had so much respect for the fact that Father Andrew saw his own sins in my actions. I wished all adults were like Father Andrew.
— Jenny McCarthy, Bad Habits: Confessions of a Recovering Catholic
For Parents: Never blame or scold a child for their first mistake after all family is the first school from where a child learns.
— Neeraj Bhanot
But the lucidity of her old age allowed her to see, and she said so many times, that the cries of children in their mothers' wombs are not announcements of ventriloquism or a faculty for prophecy but an unmistakable sign of an incapacity for love.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t oke enough holes to drain it dry.
— Alvin Price
Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids—all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine—it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order.
— Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Helen devises plans to become a monster herself.
— Ekaterina Sedia, Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness
Invest your money and time acquiring knowledge for yourself... and the good news is that as you do so, you keep your children and grandchildren and unborn generations enlightened by what you have already learnt!
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
The imagination and trust of a young child are immeasurable. Through the prism of their eyes all things are possible, all dreams come true, and all people are friends. There is beauty in the seriousness of their play and their laughter is pure and unspoiled. Regardless of what other people say…go ahead and act like a child. Hang on to that simple spirit of living for as long as you possibly can.
— Jason Versey, A Walk with Prudence
In these writings, and in all my teaching work, I continue to ask the question, “What about the children?
— Albert J. LaChance, The Third Covenant: The Transmission of Consciousness in the Work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, and Albert J. LaChance
Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight.
— Richard Price, Clockers
Asking a parent not to be a parent is like asking the sun not to be hot or snow not to be cold.
— Lesa Howard
Even the most powerful enemies who threaten or oppress God’s children will one day fall.
— Jim George
We find in our children our own selves again, who might be made better than we are.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
The only thing Jess really cared about were those two children and letting them know they were okay. Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you had your mother at your back, you'd be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.
— Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
You shouldn't do that. Not to your child. You should-carry your own burdens.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
I was twelve. You were girls, and therefore an entirely different species.
— Elizabeth May, The Falconer
Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her--and you. ... And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing---as he knew of me--that he will protect you with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad.
— Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood
Children with autism are colourful - they are often very beautiful and, like the rainbow, they stand out.
— Adele Devine, Colour Coding for Learners with Autism: A Resource Book for Creating Meaning through Colour at Home and School
I'm only keeping in touch with you for the sake of the children. Way to look after our son, by the way. I let you have him for the weekend and before I know it he's chained underground, awaiting Last Times and stinking of mead.
— Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki
I wasn't exactly good with children. I wasn't bad with them, as such. I just wasn't around them much and, because of that, when I was, they freaked me out because I didn't know what to do with them.
— Kristen Ashley, Sweet Dreams
Still the most magical day of my life was the day I became a mom.
— Linda  Becker
Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?
— Jodi Picoult, Songs of the Humpback Whale
Kids are naturally curious about the world around them. Everything is fascinating and holds their attention as they explore their new surroundings. Adults however, have grown up hearing the word ‘no’, ‘don't do that,’ and ‘quit daydreaming so often, they create their own little world, a world with lots of limitations. What then do most adults teach to their children? ‘No’, ‘don't do that,’ and ‘quit daydreaming.’ So, what can you learn from a child today…?
— James A. Murphy, The Waves of Life Quotes and Daily Meditations
Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.
— Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
Morals do exist outside of organized religion, and the ‘morality’ taught by many of these archaic systems is often outdated, sexist, racist, and teaches intolerance and inequality. When a parent forces a child into a religion, the parent is effectively handicapping his or her own offspring by limiting the abilities of the child to question the world around him or her and make informed decisions. Children raised under these conditions will mature believing that their religion is the only correct one, and, in the case of Christianity, they will believe that all who doubt their religion’s validity will suffer eternal damnation. This environment is one that often breeds hate, ignorance, and ‘justified’ violence.
— David G. McAfee, Disproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings
In the agricultural age, women conceived younger and had many more children because children were economic assets as workers on the farm. In the postindustrial age, children are emotional assets but economic liabilities, costing both a middle-class husband and wife or a single parent over $10,000 a year.
— Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, In Her Own Sweet Time: Egg Freezing and the New Frontiers of Family
Children need to see that they are part of a history and that the story of their family is a living thing. God tells it, a new story in each generation, and each must hold hands across the sea of time, joining together the ones who went before and the ones who come after. It is given from above. Little do we understand this in the beginning, but time teaches us many things we did not expect to learn. That is life. It is the same everywhere.
— Michael D. O'Brien, Theophilos
My aim is to sort the jumble of information we throw at these children and present it in such a way that they will have a greater chance of achieving independence and fulfilment.
— Adele Devine, Colour Coding for Learners with Autism: A Resource Book for Creating Meaning through Colour at Home and School
It feels good to have parents, but it feels even better to not have an evil one.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
I believe in giving as honest an answer as I can. Because perhaps if people spent more time being honest with each other, especially with children, there would be less unhappiness in the world.
— Jane Lotter, The Bette Davis Club
Children are God's way of saving us. They give us a second chance at getting it right.
— Nancy Arroyo Ruffin, Letters to My Daughter: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems about Love, Pride, and Identity
Mothers burning inside the risen suns of their children.
— Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
DOSTIE: Let's be honest here. People? Sometimes they suck. But kids, well, they're like a new snowfall, you know?
— Hillary DePiano, New Year's Thieve
Children only know what you teach them.
— Paul Ramsey
The nastiest kind of writer is a ghostwriter, who bears people’s children in their body for money.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
What a funny girl, I thought, and then I realized something. To the three-year-old ye, and maybe even to the thirty year old eye, weeds and grass look very similar. Same color, same feeling, same texture.
— Angie  Smith, Mended: Pieces of a Life Made Whole
When I was a child, I used to wonder why markets in my locality were all situated near the main roads. I grew up a little to get the answer; " that business minded people can meet there easily!" Your dream must be situated where they can meet people!
— Israelmore Ayivor
As a child, I used to wonder why markets in my locality were all situated near the main roads. I grew up a little to get the answer; " that business minded people can meet there easily!" Your dream must be situated where they can meet people!
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
History has shown us time and time again that you don't have to know someone to love them with all your heart.
— Shannon L. Alder
Our fathers were demons,' Catarina said. 'Our mothers were heroes.
— Cassandra Clare, What Really Happened in Peru
I have come to believe that in order to thrive, a child must have at least one adult in her life who shows her unconditional love, respect, and confidence.
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
We enshrine things to memory very differently than we experience them in real time. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined a couple of terms to make the distinction. He talks about the "experiencing self" versus the "remembering self.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
If you want kids, choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote.
— Stefan Molyneux
Today, make time to play.
— Na'ama Yehuda
You’re only as happy as your least happy child,’ is the best description of motherhood I have ever read.
— Sarah Payne Stuart, Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town