c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
They're a pair of young Satans.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
In automobile terms, the child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
— Benjamin Spock
Can you imagine how your life would be if you couldn't talk?
— Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
you find yourself repeating, ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’ when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Because of the gospel -- the news about what Jesus did on the cross to save sinners -- mothers who make Christ their treasure can rejoice in their work as God works in them.
— Gloria Furman, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms
For the entrance is low: we must stoop till we are no taller than children to get in.
— C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
A child's imagination can be found in the heart of a good book.
— K. Lamb
We decided to become developmental psychologists and study children because there aren't any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads are the closest we can get to a truly alien intelligence (even if we may occasionally suspect that they are bent on making us their slaves.)
— Alison Gopnik, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
And if that's the case -- if we are our remembering selves -- then it matters far less how we feel moment to moment with our children. They play rich and crucial roles in our life stories, generating both outsize highs and outsize lows. Without such complexity, we don't feel like we've amounted to much. "You don't have a good story until something deviates from the expected," says McAdams. "And raising children leads to some pretty unexpected happenings.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous yourself.
— Nick Joaquín, The Woman Who Had Two Navels
Raising your children to love and serve Jesus is fulfilling one of God’s highest callings upon your life.
— Elizabeth George
Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you. I didn't come here because I wanted to be a colonist. I came because I've spent my whole life in the company of the brother that I hated. Now I want a chance to know the brother that I love, before it's too late, before we're not children anymore.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Children love to polish brass and silver, then move on to polishing their own shoes.
— Tim Seldin, How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way
Once my brother was very angry on my parents and told them “You should have killed me when I was a child” Interestingly I was present and told him “I don’t think it is still too late” and I have never heard him complaining about life.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Poor or rich, black or white, quiet or naughty, mentally defective or sharp-witted, thin or fat, all children are great!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I really love to read bedtime story for my kids before they fall asleep.Making them so excited and inspired, it's truly my favorite quality time.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Children do not dwell on the ordinary harshness of life, even as they suffer through it.
— Vahan Zanoyan, A Place Far Away
Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks, I want to play tiddlywinks," chanted Ramona, shaking her head back and forth.
— Beverly Cleary, Beezus and Ramona
The minds of small children are more interested in clockwork trains, jumping in puddles and other important childhood endeavours.
— Maxwell Grantly
Designing for children carries a social responsibility beyond bright colors and scaled-down furnishings that only perceptive and informed grown-ups can understand.
— Sharon Exley
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
— Abigail Van Buren
There are many soul-stirring things in this world, but not many as profound as watching the beautiful man you love holding the baby you created together. No, not many.
— Mia Sheridan, Stinger
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour
Sorting out what's good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, "Why?
— Thomas Cathcart, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
As he shut the door, he was painfully aware that they were each talking about their young--only Wrath's had four paws and a tail.Least he didn't have to worry about George succeeding him or being blind.
— J.R. Ward, The King
The world as first seen by the child becomes his lifelong standard of excellence, mindless of the fact he is admiring the ruins of his parents.
— William Stolzenburg, Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators
I never realized before that taking care of someone makes you love them more than when they take care of you.
— Helen  Smith, Alison Wonderland
Perhaps I should admit on the title page that this book is "By L. Frank Baum and his correspondents," for I have used many suggestions conveyed to me in letters from children. Once on a time I really imagined myself "an author of fairy tales," but now I am merely an editor or private secretary for a host of youngsters whose ideas I am requested to weave into the thread of my stories...My, what imaginations these children have developed! Sometimes I am fairly astounded by their daring an genius. There will be no lack of fairy-tale authors in the future, I am sure. My readers have told me what to do with Dorothy, and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and I have obeyed their mandates. They have also given me a variety of subjects to write about in the future: enough, in fact, to keep me busy for some time. I am very proud of this alliance. Children love these stories because children have helped to create them. My readers know what they want and realize I try to please them. The result is satisfactory to the publishers, to me, and (I am quite sure) to the children. I hope, my dears, it will be a long time before we are obliged to dissolve partnership.
— L. Frank Baum, The Emerald City of Oz
Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn't say, "Ask thoughtful questions" or "Make responsible decisions" or Help others." They said, "Be quiet, don't fool around, and get our work done on time.
— Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes
All children are curious and I wonder by what process this trait becomes developed in some and suppressed in others. I suspect again that schools and colleges help in the suppression insofar as they meet curiosity by giving the answers, rather than by some method that leads from narrower questions to broader questions. It is hard to satisfy the curiosity of a child, and even harder to satisfy the curiosity of a scientist, and methods that meet curiosity with satisfaction are thus not apt to foster the development of the child into the scientist. I don't advocate turning all children into professional scientists, although I think there would be advantages if all adults retained something of the questioning attitude, if their curiosity were less easily satisfied by dogma, of whatever variety.
— Marston Bates, The Nature Of Natural History
A harvester ant never quits and she never, ever gives up.
— LaDene Mayville, Hallie the Harvester Ant: Never Give Up
Discipline is not a negative word. It comes from the Greek word "to train.
— Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages of Children
When we mother well, we teach our children to embrace the moral obligations that build solid relationships, healthy marriages, and secure families.
— Jani Ortlund, Fearlessly Feminine
I’m not holding myself out as a model, but I do believe that we in America can ask more of children than we typically do, and they will not only respond to the challenge, but thrive.
— Amy Chua
Don't forget to be kind, you will make someone's day!
— Ava  Wilson, Crunky McBunky
Not to do as the child wishes would be wrong because he is born on a path, and it would be evil, a crime against nature to make him deny his spirit.
— Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Last Crossing
Relearning from children their need to question and discover can ignite one's creativity and reveal more possibilities.
— Nabil N. Jamal
I left a note for my mother. I always leave a note for my mother when I am on a case.
— Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, Nate the Great
Drawing from 1.7 million Gallup surveys collected between 2008 and 2012, researchers Angus Deaton and Arthur Stone found that parents with children at home age fifteen or younger experience more highs, as well as more lows, than those without children... And when researchers bother to ask questions of a more existential nature, they find that parents report greater feelings of meaning and reward -- which to many parents is what the entire shebang is about.
— Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Why did they have kids then? Why did they have children if they didn’t want to love and nurture them? Weren’t you supposed to cherish every moment you got with your kids? The wives sounded like the only reason to have children was to fulfill some ridiculous social contract that apparently was co- signed when we signed away our single status. If all you wanted to do was to get on with your life, while the hired help took care of bringing up your child, why have one? There was a simpler option. Just don’t have them. There were enough unwanted children in the world already.
— Shweta Ganesh Kumar, A Newlywed’s Adventures in Married Land
Creating a world within the imagination one day at a time through words and colors.
— Peggy A. Borel
How many of these children would one day be queer? How many would be felled by the acronym? How many by something else? How many would forget the circus? How many would never see it at all? How many would join?
— Trebor Healey, A Horse Named Sorrow
And much like the despairity of the woman who can never bear children, my dreams can never bear fruit. They are the mountains I can never climb.The hurdles I can never leap.The seas I can never cross. The skies I can never look up to.Yet, I adopt them. Unblemished.Guilt-free.
— Chirag Tulsiani
We decided to become development psychologists and study children because there aren't any Martians. These brilliant beings with the little bodies and big heads are the closest we can get to a truly alien intelligence (even if we may occasionally suspect that they are bent on making us their slaves.)
— Alison Gopnik, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
It was hard not to realize what kind of kid his parents wished they'd had, and when he thought about that kind of kid it was tempting for Paul to want to track, hunt, and eat the little thing.
— Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea
Since the beginning of time there was always stories like this,” he replies. “As children we reveled in the dream that there was a place out there that was different from the one we lived in.
— Celia McMahon, Skye
There is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children.
— Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark & Grimm
As a mother I see the future in the present. Every little thing she does or says makes me form a hypothesis of how she will see life and treat others in 20 years. So I plan for how amazing she will be now. Instead of living my life I have to live hers. Some may not understand how important it is to be a parent. How present, efficient, selfless, and imaginative you must be. But I do. I only pray that this little face is stronger than I am and more successful for this world and the next. I chase her butterflies. She was created from scratch and presented as a gift from God. She will never roam free, unattended and unloved.
— Kimberley Alecia Smith
You have only one chance to raise your child.
— Jackie Kennedy
The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed.
— Roman Payne
As fathers, we should have a desire to be active participants in our children’s lives.
— Asa Don Brown
Parents raise children then grow old, and their children forget the things their old parents did for them, because their brains don’t remember before they grew selfish.There are buildings all over the world full of old people sitting around looking out of windows, full of hate for their selfish sons and daughters.And meanwhile, the selfish sons and daughters look out of their windows at their children playing and think how wonderful their unbreakable bond of love is between them and their children.
— Craig  Stone, How to Hide from Humans
When the rush of the weak sweeps over those that strive to be strong, its destruction. The commonplaces of moral judgment become fogged with the lack of perception stained with the sting of longing. The voice of reason is lost in the envious echoes of hearts torn by battle. The song of our children echo the misfortune of their parent's haze---we all started out small and had dreams to become something more than what we were.
— Shannon L. Alder
Increasingly, the girl child is becoming an endangered specie aspedophiles’ continue to roam free in our societies terrorizingthe lives of our children and stripping them of all the joy andexcitement that comes with childhood.
— Oche Otorkpa, The Unseen Terrorist
I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
— Erma Bombeck
For while they'd stayed close during the absurd years of his sharp rise, having children had knocked it all into a different arrangement. The minute you had children you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls--even if you'd once been best friends--was now just that, outsiders. Families had their ways. You took note of how other people raised their kids, even other people you loved, and it seemed all wrong. The culture and practices of one's own family were the only way, for better or worse. Who could say why a family decided to have a certain style, to tell the jokes it did, to put up its particular refrigerator magnets?
— Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
Children don't understand, when things aren't given. The single parent struggling to provide; how they sacrifice themselves, by sweeping their dreams and goals under the table, just to bring bread and beans on the table.
— Anthony Liccione
Every moment I have ever experienced as a child is as important as every moment I am experiencing now, or will experience ever. I guess what I'm saying is that not everybody should have children.
— Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
Having a child isn't a deal you strike with life. As I said: a child is a gift. And what remains after a child is gone is the memory of the years it was allowed to live. Not its death
— Carsten Jensen
There are not seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
— Walt Streightiff
Children use that word "hate" to mean various things. It may mean that they are frightened...It is not physical harm that is feared...so much as some spell, or dark intention. It is a feeling you can have when you are very young even about certain house faces, or tree trunks, or very much about moldy cellars or deep closets.
— Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness
My parents won’t let me have a motorcycle, but they give me all the guns I want. I asked them for a motorcycle last Christmas and they told me I’d only kill myself. They got me this twelve-gauge instead.
— Scott Thompson
I wonder what children whose parents have money think about in their spare time.
— Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for them, and hopes for them. There was all he was powerless to change, including who they were--one too mild, one too easily tempted to be cruel, and the little girl (it was the weight of a heavy stone against his heart) a mystery to him, impossible to say what she, through her life, would need. And soon, one more.
— Alice McDermott, After This
The situation with regard to insulin is particularly clear. In many parts of the world diabetic children still die from lack of this hormone. ... [T]hose of us who search for new biological facts and for new and better therapeutic weapons should appreciate that one of the central problems of the world is the more equitable distribution and use of the medical and nutritional advances which have already been established. The observations which I have recently made in parts of Africa and South America have brought this fact very forcible to my attention.
— Charles Herbert Best
it's definitely best for little children to have a regular life, especially if they can regulate it themselves.
— Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Goes on Board
This is not a contest with your child. The winner is not the one with more points. The winner is the one whose child still loves them when they graduate from high school.
— Martin L. Kutscher, ADHD - Living without Brakes
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
I think the closest thing to a time machine that I've ever found is the Children's section of a library.
— AnnaMarie Ralph
Mommy do princesses seem at all like me?"look inside yourself and you'll see.
— Carmela LaVigna Coyle, Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?
You two are children almost grown. Your hearts have not hardened to the realities of the world. Your dreams have not fallen through your fingers. You still know hope.
— Laura Lam, Shadowplay
A child has a greater chance of being sexually abused than burned in a fire. Along with stop, drop, and roll we must teach them to yell, run, and tell.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
I do not believe in the government of the lash, if any one of you ever expects to whip your children again, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth—and sit down upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly with them in everything.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
You wanted hatchlings.”“I know. I just didn’t want those hatchlings. Personally, I blame your father.”Bercelak’s eyes grew wide. “Excuse me?”On a burst of laughter, she exclaimed, “Well that came out horribly wrong!
— G.A. Aiken, Dragon Actually
Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.
— Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon
I was just four when a hired teenage field hand attempted to molest me. Miraculously, I got away, and I told my dad. My father made three important choices that day: He listened to me, he believed me, and he took action. I was one of the fortunate ones--I had a childhood.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
The only secrets that are good are the ones with an ending. Keep surprises instead of secrets in your home.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
For their holidays: the rich’s kids travel the world
—  the poor’s kids roam around their grandparents’ yard.
Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
When we talk with our children about sexual abuse, we are not only taking a proactive step toward protecting them, we are building our relationship with them--grounded in honesty and trust. It's a win-win situation.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
Adults need to teach the children they love about sexual abuse so they know what to do if they encounter it. We need to prepare them so they know who to tell, should a violation occur, so they don't have to live with a painful secret, long into adulthood.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don't need to be afraid.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch, Rise and Shine: A Tool for the Prevention of Childhood Sexual Abuse
And Ana remembered her father's words, "Say no! Run! Tell me!
— Carolyn Byers Ruch, Rise and Shine: A Tool for the Prevention of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Protecting our kids from sexual abuse is not accomplished in a single conversation, but in ongoing conversations grounded in honesty and trust.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
Don't put your child at risk. Limit unsupervised one-on-one time between your child & another adult or another child.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
I have heard them preach, when I sat in the pew and my feet did not touch the floor, about the final home of the unconverted. In order to impress upon the children the length of time they would probably stay if they settled in that country, the preacher would frequently give us the following illustration: 'Suppose that once in a billion years a bird should come from some far-distant planet, and carry off in its little bill a grain of sand, a time would finally come when the last atom composing this earth would be carried away; and when this last atom was taken, it would not even be sun up in hell.' Think of such an infamous doctrine being taught to children!
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
A culture of vultures steeped and born of violence shall choke on the blood of its offspring.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
No child really chooses his religion
—  it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in.
You two are perfect together. And one day . . . one day your children will change everything.
— G.A. Aiken, Dragon Actually
Build a bridge over shame by teaching kids about sexual abuse. Give them a chance to run to us should they encounter it. Be their hero.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
For children, parents are a yardstick for normalcy.
— Upasana Saraf
Sometimes I hesitate to use the term sexual abuse. It conjures up worst-case scenarios in our minds, and we think, "That will never happen to my kids." And we never begin the conversation regarding sexual abuse with our children. But one violation left in secret can cause significant pain.
— Carolyn Byers Ruch
Writing a book is like raising a child, the only difference is you don’t have the fucking part in writing a book.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
When the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and she said, "Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder," and her five year old wandered into the kitchen and said, "Sixty hamburgers?
— Sara Sheridan
I don't think Tera is capable of working with you by her own choice, no matter how much grass you pull for her, no matter how much you brush her. I think she's more like ... a three or four-year-old child, and you are her mother. Mothers must be firm with their children, sometimes make them do what needs to be done, sometimes even punish them.
— J.Z. Colby, Journey
Wherever it is you make your home, there is always this other place, this other person, calling to you. Come to me. Come back.
— Joyce Maynard
We should teach our kids that they're blessing and not a burden and that they're valuable beyond what they can imagine - in God's eyes, in the world's eyes - that they're purpose is so important to fulfill and it's gonna make a difference in the world. And they're the only ones that can make the difference that they can make, in the way that they can make it. That's why we all have different fingerprints. And I feel like the message is not clear enough. It's not clear because they go to school and they get challenged and they're bombarded with the idea that abortion is okay, that we can just go ahead and, you know, if we're not ready to have a kid we can just take care of that problem. But kids are not a problem, they're not a mistake, they're not a burden. They're blessing from God and that's what we don't understand. My mom was sixteen when she had me and we both almost died, I was a second kid, she had my brother when she was fifteen. And we both almost died and the doctors told her to abort me and I think that a lot of people gave her that advice. So when I grew up I think I had a sense of being a burden. And I think a lot of kids actually have that sense.
— Lacey Sturm
Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion -- a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child.
— Lloyd Alexander
Mom was adamantly pro-choice. She had a bumper sticker on the car that read If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child? But in her case the choice was to keep me.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
I'm Reginald Clark, I'm afraid of the darkSo please do not close this book on me.
— Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
Grandchildren are their grandparents' toys.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Children know something that most people have forgotten.
— Keith Haring, Journals
The child, through no fault of its own, and through the very nature of being a child, is egocentric and self-absorbed. Thus, if the daughter does not make her bed, and the mother yells, and the father beats the mother – then the daughter believes all that happened is her fault. Why? Because she did not make the bed, do you see? André Chevalier
— Nikki Sex, Fate
For their holidays: the rich go see the world
—  the poor go see their parents.
Parenting is the greatest pay it forward system on earth. We don't owe our parents anything. We owe our children everything. The same was true for our parents. The same will be true for our children.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Fairytales teach children that the world is fraught with danger, including life-threatening danger; but by being clever (always), honest (as a rule, but with common-sense exceptions), courteous (especially to the elderly, no matter their apparent social station), and kind (to anyone in obvious need), even a child can succeed where those who seem more qualified have failed.And this precisely what children most need to hear.To let them go on believing that the world is safe, that they will be provided for and achieve worthwhile things even if they remain stupid, shirk integrity, despise courtesy, and act only from self-interest, that they ought to rely on those stronger, smarter, and more able to solve their problems, would be the gravest disservice: to them, and to society as a whole.-On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children
— J. Aleksandr Wootton
As a subconscious attempt to add meaning or purpose to their life: The unemployed pray for a job
—  the retired pray for grandchildren.
I remember us saying that we liked small houses, that proximity engendered closeness in a family. That nobody should be raised by a nanny or in day care. I remember us saying that time, not money, was the greatest resource. That everything would be all right. That the universe would provide. That belief was a force more powerful than gravity itself.
— Jonathan Evison, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
In a town in Calabria, a long time ago, there lived an old lady everyone called Strega Nona, which meant "Grandma Witch".
— Tomie dePaola, Strega Nona
Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion
—  give them nature.
There it is."And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of his house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again."The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine.
— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
A child who is born is something to seek out, something to search for, a star, a northern light, a column of energy in the universe. And a child who dies-that's an abomination.
— Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow
The creative adult is the child who survived after the world tried killing them, making them grown up. The creative adult is the child who survived the blandness of schooling, the unhelpful words of bad teachers, and the nay-saying ways of the world. The creative adult is in essence simply that, a child.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
I believe that parents who love their children do everything for them with love, even discipline.
— Ellen J. Barrier, How to Trust God When All Other Resources Have Failed
Although people all over the world pray in different ways, it is to each heart the most precious light.
— Alexis York Lumbard
Shot the man! Shed human blood! Hid in a pool!" ejaculated Mr. Dove, overcome. "Really, Rachel, you are a most trying daughter. Why should you go out before daybreak and do such things?
— H. Rider Haggard, The Ghost Kings
And the sun on the wall of her room, the block of sun with all the tiny flying things in it. When she was little she thought they were the souls of dead insects, still buzzing in the light.
— Tim Winton, The Riders
I say, "You a kind girl," and she nod, repeat it back to me. But before I can do another one, she get up and chase that poor dog around the yard and laugh and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?
— Kathyrn Stockett
She was still glad she looked like Scully. He wasn't pretty either, but pretty people weren't the kind you need. Pretty people saw themselves in the mirror and were either too happy or too sad. People like Billie just shrugged and didn't care. She didn't want to turn into anyone pretty. Anyway, she had scars now, you only had to look.
— Tim Winton, The Riders
I hate our current leaders becouse they don't know the value of there people, but like there ideas because it will soon turn against them and any of there kind.
— Hamzatribah
single universe, many planets,many continents, and many countries, my country Nigeria will never be like others.
— Hamzatribah
Dear my little children I work hard so as to make your lives better. so don't rest until you do thesame to your own children.
— Hamzatribah
Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?""That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient Athens. "He said you couldn't tell how well they'd turn out until they'd been fired in the kiln.""Well then?""Well then, what?" muttered Alex. "Some pots shatter in the heat, Aries. I should know. I was the one who had to sweep them up every evening. Sometimes it's better not to go near the fire.""Well, that's the spirit I must say!" huffed Aries. "Thank you very much!
— Julia Wills, Fleeced!
Money-it can buy your kids anything, but it cannot teach them love, respect, and the true value of living life without things.
— Carew Papritz, The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
He's the King of all the heavensAnd all found here below.To Him, your hearts are like this lakeReflecting in His glow.
— Alexis York Lumbard, The Conference of the Birds
Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn’t even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don’t ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting.
— L.R. Knost, The Gentle Parent: Positive, Practical, Effective Discipline
Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.'I said, 'Are you a monster? Like Ursula Monkton?'Lettie threw a pebble into the pond. 'I don't think so,' she said. 'Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.'I said, 'People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.''P'raps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?''Dunno. Why do you think she's scared of anything? She's a grown-up, isn't she? Grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of things.'Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups...' She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, '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. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
You have been the great green adventure of my life. Without you my days would be unlit.
— Katherine Rundell, Rooftoppers
My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset
We still counted happiness and health and love and luck and beautiful children as "ordinary blessings.
— Joan Didion, Blue Nights
Be careful, fathers, when you inordinately desire things to be better for your children than they were for you. Do not, however unintentionally, make things worse by removing the requirement for reasonable work as part of their experience, thereby insulating your children from the very things that helped make you what you are.
— Neal A. Maxwell
When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.
— Joan Didion, Blue Nights
Every time a written word is put to page it is the opportunity to expand our minds, whether we are the writer or the reader. Enjoy the journey wherever it may take you!
— K. Lamb
How much our society values its children can be measured by how well they are treated and protected.
— Howard Markel
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,Adore to weeping,Love to laughing,Desire to praising.Tickle, giggle, kiss!Adonai my God,For one moment in love,Let alone a thousand,Let alone my life,For the honor of raising and lovingChildren in love,Praise of You is ever upon my lips.
— Zoe Klein
...he is not like other children, not cruel, or savage. For this very reason he is called 'strange.' A child who is mature, in the sense that the heart is mature, is always, I have observed, called deficient.
— Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don’t have to say anything. Be friendly and then go doyour best. That will make you special, too!
— Jeff Hutchins, Denton the Dragon in Tales of Bubbleland
When I see an evil person, I cannot believe that once he was an innocent and sweet baby.
— Amit Kalantri
Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we didn't make it past the age of maybe 10? Think back to when we were younger, before we were so easily influenced by adults. We rebelled against everything that we now believe is impossible. Super Heroes still existed and we didn't hold grudges because "sorry" was okay and as long as you still wanted to share your toys with me, nothing more needed to be said. Be 10 years old today everyone.
— D'Andre Lampkin
Children need to know that the things that make them vastly different from one another are the very things that make them beautifully special.
— Tiffany Haisten, Red Is the Color Of...
Sometimes people who look different from you are scary. Maybe they are ugly. Maybe they are loud. Maybe theyare big. Maybe they are green. Maybe they are all those things. But you should not be afraid of them just because of how they look. You may find they are nice to you if you arenice to them.
— Jeff Hutchins
Ever seen a two-year-old tattering around a garden? There might be a poison ivy, or rose bushes or hawthorne around the edges. There might be spades or secateurs lying on the lawn. The kid doesn't care. He just wants to play with all those brightly coloured things he sees. To him, the world is a safe place. And you might want to rush out and cut back all those sharp spiky plants so they can't hurt him, and you might want to clear away all those dangerous tools just in case, he picks them up and cut himself on them, but you know you shouldn't because if you keep doing that then he either will grow up thinking the can never hurt him, or he might go the other way, and think that everything is dangerous, and he should never go far from your side. So you just watch. And wait. And if he does get rush from the poison ivy or if he does cut his fingers off with the secateurs, then you get him to the hospital as quickly as you can, in the reasonably sure knowledge the he'll never make the same mistake again.
— Andy Lane, Slow Decay
A nursery rhyme shapes your bones and nerves, and it shapes your mind. They are powerful, nursery rhymes, and immensely old, and not toys, even though they are for children." "But they make no sense!" Summer protested "Ah, well," said Ben. "Sometimes sense hides behind walls. You must find a window and stick your head right in before you can see it.
— Katherine Catmull, Summer and Bird
In the end, the slow decay of the body didn't matter. We all continue on, renewing ourselves, through our offspring. They are what matter. They are what survives.
— Andy Lane, Slow Decay
Every year I collect a select amount of material possessions (baseball cards, coins, famous paraphernalia) to pass on to my children. In two or more generations they should have a small fortune of 'ancient' famous items.
— Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea
Children are born with a desire to have meaning. Give them Jesus, and they will have it eternally.
— Alisa Hope Wagner, Eve of Awakening
Despite their displays of bravado, young boys can be peculiarly susceptible to atmosphere("Between Four Yews")
— Reggie Oliver, Best New Horror 24
It takes courage and maturity to realise your own story.
— Horst Kornberger, The Power of Stories: Nurturing Children's Imagination and Consciousness
We must give our children back their ability to see the divine; we must help them to return to their original innocence where they saw God everywhere they look. They saw the divine in the flowers and the insects of the world, they saw God in the animals and the clouds, and we have stolen that ability from them, give it back to them! Tell them they do not have to wait for an afterlife to experience the divine, because the divine is here with us, within each of us and all around us. Can’t you see?
— Martin Suarez
Every verse in the scrolls of your days sings to us of hope and wonder.
— Zoe Klein, Drawing in the Dust
Alexander assured her, 'Eva, none of us know our children. Because they are not us.
— Sue Townsend, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
It isn't the amount you spend today, it's what you want to invest in for the future!
— Tyler J. Suiters
Children are very wiseintuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously, and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. 'The unknown person' inside of them is our hope for the future.
— Janusz Korczak
For really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it.
— E. Nesbit, Five Children and It
All the games were selected for them by supervisors and had to have some useful, educational purpose. The children learned these new games but unlearned something else in the process: they forgot to be happy, how to take pleasure in little things and last, but not least, how to dream
— Michael Ende, Momo
Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk tome about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead!
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
Children and fools always speak the truth.
— Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying
It's a mother's greatest privilege to give birth, to raise a child. But a woman's greatest honor is to look at her son with pride and know that she's helped him become a man.
— Susan May Warren, It Had to Be You
I don’t care what your excuse is, I don’t care what you think God told you to do, if you are in the business of closing children’s minds and obliterating their capacity to imagine, and depriving them of a capacity to laugh, then you are a criminal. Maybe not under the law, but under any decent system of morality.Shame on anyone who brainwashes a child and attacks their individual liberty and deprives them of the freedom that is the very definition of a human being. Shame.
— Michael  Grant
We haven't remained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time. Through books Cathy and I have lived a zillion lives . . . our vicarious way to feel alive.
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
She lay outside in the courtyard, staring up at the raindrops… feeling them hit her body… trying to guess where one would land next. The nuns called again, threatening that pneumonia might make an insufferably headstrong child a lot less curious about nature.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
Look at you, standing there in your iron- gray dress, feeling piousand self- righteous while you starve small children!
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.It is true that they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys.Subconsciously, too, every one recognizes they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.
— Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
You want a child because it is a link in the bridge that you are building between the past and the future, a cantilever that holds you, so that you are not alone.
— Dan Chaon, Stay Awake
A failing grade does not denounce a child to fail in life. An IQ is what I would call an 'inadequate question', it may state our brain capacity or tell us how smart we are, but it does not predict our future. Happy Character Traits and positive Reinforcements will help a child succeed better than a number that means nothing
— Davis Carlson
Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects.
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
If you could stay as stubborn as when you were a child then you need not to compromise on your dreams.
— Amit Kalantri
The cafeteria in the Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital basement was the saddest place in the world—and forever it shall be—with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse foreboding of those who stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich.
— Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives
The literature of childhood abounds with evidence that the peaks of a child's experience are not visits to the cinema, or even family outings to the sea, but occasions when he escapes into places that are disused and overgrown and silent. To a child there is more joy in a rubbish tip than a flowery rockery, in a fallen tree than a piece of statuary, in a muddy track than a gravel path.
— Iona Opie, Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Dueling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, and Pretending
Children are God’s way of letting us know His work will continue, even long after we are gone.
— J.W. Lord
Hutch called into the semidarkness of The Shed. 'Somebody's coming, Heck!'Then he, with the rest, faded from sight with that uncanny quickness known only to creatures of the wild and young children who are, after all, also creatures of the wild.("The Shed")
— E. Everett Evans, Zacherley's Vulture Stew
Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven'tremained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time.
— V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic
We can be much, much more than we were taught in teachers college... more than stern ladies at the front of the room who teach children to recite by rote. We can be, we MUST BE, learning partners, champions, observers, explorers, friends- and , for these special hurt children we need to be family
— Jenny Bowen, Wish You Happy Forever: What China's Orphans Taught Me About Moving Mountains
See, I am very dependent... on beauty and peace of the world... on loyalty of friends... on love in families... on happiness and health of children. And I do not want to be free as long as I have it all...
— Galina Nelson