c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
This framing accents the importance of building a tidier system, one that incorporates the array of existing child care centers, then pushes to make their classrooms more uniform, with a socialization agenda "aligned" with the curricular content that first or second graders are expected to know. Like the common school movement, uniform indicators of quality, centralized regulation, more highly credientialed teachers are to ensure that instruction--rather than creating engaging activities for children to explore--will be delivered in more uniform ways. And the state signals to parents that this is now the appropriate way to raise one's three- or four-year-old. Modern child rearing is equated with systems building in the eyes of universal pre-kindergarten advocates--and parents hear this discourse through upbeat articles in daily newspapers, public service annoucement, and from school authorities.
— Bruce Fuller, Standardized Childhood: The Political and Cultural Struggle over Early Education
A child may be "spoiled" by a lack of training or by inappropriate love that gives or trains incorrectly.
— Garry Chapman
Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
— Wilkie Collins
that a child is not an event, alleged or otherwise, a mistake or accident or crime. . . he is by definition more than this, sum rather than division, a living promissory note.
— John Burnham Schwartz, Northwest Corner
I, sole heir to the Munodi line and memory, am childless. A friend who knows such things has told me that this explains my compulsion to capture what I can with black ink on white paper." ("The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi")
— Rikki Ducornet
...indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.
— Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate
Most anti-vaccine books claim that all shots are bad, the diseases aren't really anything to fear, and as long as you live a natural and healthy lifestyle, you don't have to worry. I think this is a very irresponsible approach to the vaccine issue. Vaccines are beneficial in ridding our population of both serious and nonserious diseases.
— Robert W. Sears, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child
Momo would have been delighted, except that most of the newcomers had no idea how to play. All they did was sit around looking bored and sullen and watching Momo and her friends. Sometimes they deliberately broke up the other children's games and spoiled everything. Squabbles and scuffles were frequent, though these never lasted long because Momo's presence had its usual effect on the newcomers, too, so they soon started having bright ideas themselves and joining in with a will. The trouble was, new children turned up nearly every day, some of them from distant parts of the city, and one spoilsport was enough to ruin the game for everyone else. But there was another thing that Momo couldn't quite understand - a thing that hadn't happened until very recently. More and more often these days, children turned up with all kind of toys you couldn't really play with: remote-controlled tanks that trundled to and fro but did little else, or space rockets that whizzed around on strings but got nowhere, or model robots that waddled along with eyes flashing and heads swiveling but that was all. They were highly expensive toys such as Momo's friends had never owned, still less than Momo herself. Most noticeable of all, they were so complete, down to the tiniest detail, that they left nothing at all to the imagination. Their owners would spend hours watching them, mesmerized but bored, as they trundled, whizzed, and waddled along. Finally, when that palled, they would go back to the familiar old games in which a couple of cardboard boxes, a torn tablecloth, a molehill or a handful of pebbles were quite sufficient to conjure up a whole world of make believe.
— Michael Ende, Momo
Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization.
— George Macaulay Trevelyan
A writer is anyone who follows only the truth of who they are, without ever relying on anything other than the poverty and solitude of that truth. In this respect, children and women in love are born writers.
— Christian Bobin
The men in grey were powerless to meet this challenge head-on. Unable to detach the children from Momo by bringing them under their direct control, they had to find some roundabout means of achieving the same end, and for this they enlisted the children's elders. Not all grown-ups made suitable accomplices, of course, but plenty did. [....] 'Something must be done,' they said. 'More and more kids are being left on their own and neglected. You can't blame us - parents just don't have the time these days - so it's up to the authorities.' Others joined in the chorus. 'We can't have all these youngsters loafing around, ' declared some. 'They obstruct the traffic. Road accidents caused by children are on the increase, and road accidents cost money that could be put to better use.' 'Unsupervised children run wild, declared others.'They become morally depraved and take to crime. The authorities must take steps to round them up. They must build centers where the youngsters can be molded into useful and efficient members of society.' 'Children,' declared still others, 'are the raw material for the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing children from tomorrow's world, we still allow too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations.' The timesavers were all in favor of such a policy, naturally, and there were so many of them in the city by this time that they soon convinced the authorities of the need to take prompt action. Before long, big buildings known as 'child depots' sprang up in every neighborhood. Children whose parents were too busy to look after them had to be deposited there and could be collected when convenient. They were strictly forbidden to play in the streets or parks or anywhere else. Any child caught doing so was immediately carted off to the nearest depot, and its parents were heavily fined. None of Momo's friends escaped the new regulation. They were split up according to districts they came from and consigned to various child depots. Once there, they were naturally forbidden to play games of their own devising. All 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 how to be happy, how to take pleasure in the little things, and last but not least, how to dream. Weeks passed, and the children began to look like timesavers in miniature. Sullen, bored and resentful, they did as they were told. Even when left to their own devices, they no longer knew what to do with themselves. All they could still do was make a noise, but it was an angry, ill-tempered noise, not the happy hullabaloo of former times. The men in grey made no direct approach to them - there was no need. The net they had woven over the city was so close-meshed as to seem inpenetrable. Not even the brightest and most ingenious children managed to slip through its toils. The amphitheater remained silent and deserted.
— Michael Ende, Momo
A child is like a relationship. You can only shape it as it's growing, or it becomes a menace if let to grow without respect, understanding and focus.
— Andew-Knox B Kaniki
I’m planting a tree to teach me to make the world a better place.
— Andrea Koehle Jones from The Wish Trees
I’m planting a tree to remind me to be open and kindhearted.
— Andrea Koehle Jones from My Persephonele
Awful things, children. Needy, self-centered tyrants, the boys all teeth and firsts, the girls all claws and spit. Gathering into sniveling packs and sniffing out vulnerabilities — and woe to the child not cunning enough to hide their own — the others would close in like the grubby shark they were. Great pastime, savaging someone.
— Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters
We need to protect and care for our children because when society fails to protect its children, there will be no one else to learn from.
— Gift Gugu Mona
All laughter is subversive, even the laughter of children.
— Marty Rubin
Want to educate a child?Provide them opportunities to be themselves.
— Mahrukh
Stay strong. Don't be bullied by anyone.
— Luke Bookwrighter, Adventures of a Boy Named Carl: Alternative Version for Younger Kids
The newly minted maternal heart, it completely melted into mush, the oxytocin I know now, had kicked in, and how. I would fight tigers barehanded, climb down cliffs, throw myself in the path of a speeding car, and even do calculus again if I needed to, for this child.
— Kiran Manral, Karmic Kids: The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You
What's important to recognize is that in the U.S. today, tens of millions of kids start life on a uneven playing field. Imagine having to try to run a race if you started ten yards behind everyone else, hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, or maybe even dinner the night before, had slept in your third homeless shelter that month and didn't have shoes that fit right. Catching up would be really, really hard. With almost 32 million American kids living in low-income families, that means four out of ten runners are starting far back.
— Chelsea Clinton, It's Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!
We pass hatred and prejudice on to our children, as though they were heirlooms of humanity. We cling to traditions that keep us bound to a way of life that no longer works and arguably never has. Those who can glean the wisdom of the old traditions, but put away the ignorance and prejudices interwoven into them by the generations to come before, have always played a vital role in our global community; though their actions are usually met with resistance. We—all of us—must be assured that change can come without loss of identity. There are certain things we can leave along the roadside without becoming less than we are—certain heirlooms that, when let go, free us to move forward into a healthier future.
— L.M. Browning, Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations
Justified within ourselves that we have suffered more than others, we feel guiltless when we disregard those in front of us, be they our family, our co-workers, strangers we interact with during our daily business, or faceless masses in foreign lands.There are those who transcend the bitter acts done unto them, declaring that the pain shall end with them. And then there are those who use the crimes committed against them as a free pass to commit crimes against others. Wronged as we each have been, nothing gives us the right to disregard the fragility of another. We can and must halt the hate passing throughout this world. A hateful act done unto us can be absorbed and transcended or it can be re-projected, thus allowing its ill force to continue moving throughout the population.We must work to transcend those hateful things already carried out upon each of us and in doing so prevent new acts of hate from being done. We must work to heal from the wounds already received and connect to a sense of consideration, to ensure that we do not pass along any of our pain to the generations as yet unburdened.We must declare a general amnesty; we must forgive each other and in doing so find that we have been forgiven. We must put away our bitterness and extend an open hand.
— L.M. Browning, Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations
The wonder of the womb is the birth of a child.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We need to teach our kids to be tough: the system may be synthesized to protect them from bullies, but who will protect them against a system gone wrong?
— Charbel Tadros
Praise children when they do good, And if they should stumble or fall, Show them how to be humble,Show them how to stand tall
— Charmaine J Forde
Reasoning does create a paradox: it leads both to more rule following and more rebelliousness. By explaining moral principles, parents encourage their children to comply voluntarily with rules that align with important values and to question rules that don’t. Good explanations enable children to develop a code of ethics that often coincides with societal expectations; when they don’t square up, children rely on the internal compass of values rather than the external compass of rules.
— Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
Unless there was an open heart, and caring hands, and listening ears, the children will not be able to correct their steps alone, or overcome their wrong habits that still need their parents’ efforts, patience and big and continuous support.
— Maryam Abdullah Alnaymi
My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.
— Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit
. . . for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.
— Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son
Children are holy angels.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I loved it in the unconditional way that children love their first home.
— Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
She was an afterthought, little Martha. She was treated the way many families treated pet dogs - she had to be fed and cleaned every now and then, but she was left to her own devices for the most part.
— Kelsey Brickl, Hardtack: A Civil War Story
And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known before. When- which was not often, but sometimes happened- they burst into tears of utter frustration or despair, their tiny disappointments seemed to him more tragic than Man’s long retreat after the loss of his Galactic Empire. That was something too huge and remote for comprehension, but the weeping of a child could pierce one to the heart.Alvin had met love in Diaspar, but now he was learning something equally precious, and without which love itself could never reach its highest fulfillment but must remain forever incomplete. He was learning tenderness.
— Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars
With sensitive children, physical blows or traumas aren't required to make them afraid of the dark.
— Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
Mutual helplessness is the essential relation between parent and child.
— Marty Rubin
Just that sons and fathersAre like mirrors and daughters are soft
— Richard L.  Ratliff
Left unaddressed, chronic anxiety can disrupt many aspects of development, including a child's capacity to learn and ability to connect socially as well as the opportunity for the brain to grow and make connections. In time, children with high levels of anxiety are more likely to face depression, turn to substance use, become less likely to finish high school and may therefore have a harder time keeping a job or managing financially.
— Michele Kambolis, Generation Stressed: Play-Based Tools to Help Your Child Overcome Anxiety
The light of compassion shined so steadily from within them that others could clearly see all the choices they were making, so they no longer existed in the dark. Without a word, without a sword, the energy that was void of light was unable to function on Earth. This brilliant light, which emanated from individuals and became a collective force, stopped the planet’s shifting. The seas became calm. The children stepped out to play. And a new song was heard everywhere.
— Julie A. Barnes, All Flavors
Find children in your neighborhood,Teach them to read and writeTake them out of the darkness,Into the light
— Charmaine J Forde
Find children in your neighborhood,Teach them how to read and writeTake them out of the darkness,Into the light
— Charmaine J Forde
Every time we see a child we travel back to the times we have forgotten and we bitterly visit all the beautiful things taken from us in the name of being an adult!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The most important question I ask myself as a parent is this. How can I best help my children be fully themselves and happy with who they are in the world, however they show up.
— Lehla Eldridge, Jump, Fall, Fly, From Schooling to Homeschooling to Unschooling
If you cannot learn from a child, teaching a child might be useless!!!!
— Harrish Sairaman
A child comes in your Life to correct your Karma, learn instead of putting your Karma on the child!
— Harrish Sairaman
Don't waste our children's future on man's past.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Dippy sniffs box. Dippy cannot comprehend challenging concepts such as "inside" and "outside"- attempts to balance on folded box edge.Dippy falls off box. Box flips over onto Dippy.As Shakespeare would say "There were then divers alarums and great shriekings as of demons or small children under the age of three.
— Amy Petrie Shaw, The Tao of the Dippy Cat: A Series of Uncomfortable Incidents and Horrible Happenings
The happiness of childhood, the calming of a child's fears and the healthy development of its self-confidence depend directly upon love.
— Auliq-Ice
It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table.
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
But I had no idea what I looked like. Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view.
— Sebastian Barry, Days Without End
Let us admit that some government programs and personnel are efficient and effective, and others are not. Let us acknowledge that when it comes to the treatment of children, some individuals are evil, neglectful, or incompetent, but others are trying to do the best they can against daunting odds and deserve not our contempt but the help only we—through our government—can provide. Let us stop stereotyping government and individuals as absolute villains or absolute saviors, and recognize that each must be part of the solution. Let us use government, as we have in the past, to further the common good.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us
More than Captain America your kids need Amelia Earhart – more than Ant Man, they need Abraham Lincoln - more than Green Arrow they need Gandhi – more than Iron Man they need Isaac Newton.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
Force your kids to pursue success and they shall be drowned into the abyss of characterlessness, but let them pursue excellence and they shall rise as glorious Gods.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
She’s my daughter. The only one I have and the only child I’ll ever have. I see the fear in her eyes, I sense her hesitancy, but when I get her to smile it makes up for all those moments in between. I got this one chance. My last chance. I don’t want to blow what little time I have left with her so no, I don’t want anyone rocking her world.
— Katie McGarry, Nowhere But Here
Human making is our mission, but if you break the very soul of the would-be humans, then there will be no human to raise.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
Let your children nourish their knack, for that knack shall one day provide them with the way to live with dignity and contentment.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
Let your child be the torch of truth and they shall shine over the entirety of the human society brightening even the darkest corners.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
A little child feeding an animal with great compassion will always look like a giant in our eyes!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one–probably a child–who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.
— Stephen King, It
Pamela produced placid babies. "They don't tend to turn feral until they're two," she said.
— Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
There is nothing glorious about creating life out of passionate penetration. Even the animals can do that. The real glory comes when the life you create becomes the help in the lives of countless other humans.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
I realized how much it must suck to be a parent. You devote everything to your kids, who just end up growing up and disliking you. I felt bad for them briefly, but at least they had each other. In that moment I decided I wouldn't have kids. I don't think I could handle the level of betrayal I'd feel once I realized they weren't interested in me anymore.
— Sara  Taylor, Boring Girls
All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of the temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions.For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.
— Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Do not raise creepy crawlers my dear braveheart parents. Raise mighty humans with Himalayan strength in their veins. Give them the voice that has gone extinct in today’s society. And if there is only one thing you could give to your children, then give them courage – courage to pursue their passion – courage to trample every obstacle in their path – courage to keep walking even when their heart bleeds in agony.
— Abhijit Naskar, Human Making is Our Mission: A Treatise on Parenting
A child is child.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
She wished for a moment that they were all children again. It still seemed extraordinary to her, that everything had turned out the way it had.
— Sarah Waters, The Night Watch
Koji pulled Ruben onto the next cog. Together, they became part of the space between things.
— Bruce Whatley, Ruben
To make a child laugh, you don’t have to do something spectacular because they have already the ability to make themselves happy almost out of nothing!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There is no such thing as illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.
— J.Adam Snyder
Reject the fearmongering. Adopt best practices. Slow down.
— Jane Scott, The Confident Parent: A Pediatrician's Guide to Caring for Your Little One--Without Losing Your Joy, Your Mind, or Yourself
Something happened to you, they discovered, when you were given the unconditional love and trust of a child.You wanted to try to deserve it.
— Lisa Kleypas, Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor
We can all share with Nora and then she will have breakfast too!
— Tamar Bobokhidze, Nora's First Day at School
This not how you hide, Corin!
— Tamar Bobokhidze, Nora's First Day at School
It’s Ms. Hilda’s magic drawer! That’s where Ms. Hilda finds everything we need. Crayons, papers, glitters, candies, everything!
— Tamar Bobokhidze, Nora's First Day at School
In children's art class we sat in a ring of kindergarten chairs and drew three daffodils that had just been picked out of the yard; and while I was drawing, my sharpened yellow pencil and the cup of the yellow daffodil gave off wiffs just alike. That the pencil doing the drawing should give off the same smell of the flower it drew seemed part of the art lesson - as shouldn't it be? Children, like animals use all their sense to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Here and there, it's the same world. Or now and then we'll hear from an artist who's never lost it.
— Eudora Welty
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from it's hole.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
A kid is what you feed it,plus from that what can be gathered.
— Will Advise
I was thinking that preparing to meet someone you don’t think you’ll like is a lot like pulling a tooth you do like, in that you’ll be very sweaty and know very well (at least at that moment in time) that life would be far grander if you went in another direction.
— Shoeburn Ruffet, Shoeburn and The Ill-Fitting Necklace
When one of us (children) caught measles or whooping cough and we were isolated in bad upstairs, we wrote notes to each other perhaps on the hour. Our devoted mother would pass them for us, after first running them in a hot oven to kill the germs. They came into our hands curled up and warm, sometimes scorched like toast.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Children were allowed to go without chaperone in the afternoons. My sense of making fictional comedy undoubtedly first caught its spark from the antic pantomime of the silent screen, and from having a kindred soul to laugh with.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
Vianne knelt down beside Sarah, she felt for a pulse and found none. The silence turned sour, thick; all Vianne could think about was the sound of this child's laughter and how empty the world would be without it.
— Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale
Singing rose up from the convent, filling the woods with a peaceful echo that tried to penetrate her heart and smooth her features; but nothing could ease the pain of saying goodbye.
— Kate Willis, The Twin Arrows
One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerisms of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the tiny hand in yours—and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable.
— George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Must we make battlegrounds out of our children?
— Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent
For my sake,” he said firmly, addressing the air in front of him as though it were a tribunal, “I dinna want ye to bear another child. I wouldna risk your loss, Sassenach,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “Not for a dozen bairns. I’ve daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren—weans enough.”He looked at me directly then, and spoke softly.“But I’ve no life but you, Claire.”He swallowed audibly, and went on, eyes fixed on mine.“I did think, though . . . if ye do want another child . . . perhaps I could still give ye one.
— Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross
Sir Wystan,” Ryla stated. “You have come. Is the danger quite near?”“Not yet, little one, but it is always wise to be several steps ahead of it,” the old knight said gently.
— Kate Willis, The Twin Arrows
He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.
— George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Children are mirrors, tape recorders and copy cats. They show us who we REALLY are, repeat EVERYTHING we say and do exactly what we DO. So, smile and be on your best behavior.
— Sotero M Lopez II
I wondered why so many gardens around the world focused on the healing power of plants rather than their ability to kill… I felt that most children I knew would be more interested in hearing how a plant killed, how long it would take you to die if you ate it and how gruesome and painful the death might be.
— Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland
Children are like soft petals. One wrong pluck and they are damaged forever.
— Nikita Dudani
My attention was like cooking butter, not spreadable at the best of times. And when it was spreadable, it could destroy your toast by setting it ablaze. I was unpredictable, even to myself.
— Shoeburn Ruffet, Shoeburn and The Ill-Fitting Necklace
My father was a patient father. He was so patient that when he once saw a sign that read ‘Patient Entrance’ at the Welt Foot Hospital, he drove his automobile incredibly slow.
— Shoeburn Ruffet, Shoeburn and The Ill-Fitting Necklace
A great deal of a child’s life is being asked and being told things by adults and not knowing the answers or what to do. So, I didn’t say anything.
— Shoeburn Ruffet, Shoeburn and The Ill-Fitting Necklace
Children were huge, wild creatures full of promise and hope and dirt and mischief.
— Nalini Singh, Silver Silence
They say it is hard to raise children. They say I would understand it when I have children of my own. They say I would understand it when I go through the experience myself. It is not easy to raise children into adults. There are so many things that could go wrong.
— Marcella Purnama, What I Wish I Had Known
Six saw a caterpillar.''What kind?''Green, with purple and white zigzags.''I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar.
— Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
...those children were already beginning to repay her care by affording her small joys. These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
My encounter with desperation while witnessing the death of a precious child changed me, teaching me that although we will have sad times, we can move on, chastened and changed but resilient and hopeful. Laurel showed me one way to live with hope as well as cancer as she thrived even when tumors grew within her small body. She exhibited how a child can push aside despair and appreciate as many moments as possible, to believe in the power of resurrection, both the human spirit and in a Biblical sense.
— Brent Green, Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss
My name is Hazel. I started out as an idea, but I ended up something more. Not much more, to be honest. It's not like I grow up to become some great war hero or any sort of all important savior... but thanks to these two, at least I get to grow old.Not everybody does.
— Brian K. Vaughan, Saga, Vol. 1
She supposed this was the real definition of a mother – a woman who willingly allows her heart to break over and over again for her children.
— Rhian J. Martin, A Different Familiar
One day his fingers will grow knobby, he will start to sag. I pray to the goddesses, the gods, the eggs, the clouds, the trees. I pray to the wind that he will grow old and die well.
— Jessica Bates, Birth & What Came After: poems on motherhood
It's amazing to be a woman because even without children of your own, you can still be an excellent mother.
— Gift Gugu Mona
Effective parenting requires being the grown up version of what you want your children to be. Why? Because example is the most compelling superpower.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Mind what you say, but mind more closely what you do. For though children close their ears to you, their eyes remain wide open.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Children rarely follow parental advice unless it is acted out repeatedly. It’s called being an example.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
My child reflect the treatment I give.
— Efrat Cybulkiewicz
I am but the reflection in your eyes, the effect of your expressions, and the sum of your praise and criticism.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Validate my existence with your words and I will speak to you all the day long.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Parents believe that their greatest responsibility is to provide....its not...it is to prepare!
— Regina Peacock, Land's End Labyrinth
Children harbor a great many doubts and sorrows that could be eased by a loving hug from a parent.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
I may deserve your disappointment as well as a lecture and strict discipline, but what I need is your understanding, your guidance, and your unconditional love.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
I try to feel my own edges in the low light. I send my mind to the outer edges of me — where do I end?I send myself to my innermost edges,and I see that in both directions I am infinite.
— Jessica Bates, Birth & What Came After: poems on motherhood
How do you explain to a child who likes everyone in the world that adult life consists to a great extent of cutting people away?
— Miranda Emmerson, Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars
To speak of ‘trying again’ while her ghost was still in the room was an insult to both the child gone before and the child that might come after. The child before might be merely a precursor, a practice run, a whole person deemed sufficiently remembered and loved; while the child after might be a bandaid child, a second child, a replacement child. Without time taken to wait – not until the first child was forgotten but until the hideous burning fire of grief had dulled – neither child could be fully a person, but just a function of the other.
— Anna Spargo-Ryan, The Paper House
It is unreasonable to expect all children to develop correctly in unnatural man-made electromagnetic radiation fields.
— Steven Magee
Oh God, forgive me for the hateful thoughts, because I love them, these brutal, disarming bastards, I love them …
— E.R. Braithwaite, To Sir, With Love
You put a certain amount of effort into stitching a jacket or dress and you get the garment you expect. There's no mystery. But you put a thousand times more effort into raising your child and the result is the opposite of what you hope and dream for. This seemed so unfair.
— Jeffery Deaver
How can man put a cost on saving this planet of ours?Have we traversed so far down the road that all we care about is money and wealth?Do we honestly care about the coming generations or are we so greedy that we don't really give a damn about what happens after we leave this life behind?To all of you that read this, stop and look at your son's or daughter's. Walk to your windows and look outside and see other children playing heedless of their parent's greed and selfish ideals.It's the children who we are saving this world for.Not Us!
— Anthony T. Hincks
The children's hobbies aren't only the children's hobbies - the parents put just as many hours into them, year after year, sacrificing so much, paying out such huge amounts of money, that their significance eats its way even into adult brains. They started to symbolize other things compensating for or reinforcing the parents' own failures.
— Fredrik Backman, Beartown
A child is like a ship. One can never be too young to be steered to the right course.
— Regan Walker, Echo in the Wind
You should have tried the eggplant parmesan she tried to hoist on me at the church bake sale. No wonder her children turned to Satan. He probably showed up as an angel of light and promised them a decent meal.
— Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly
If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The life I chose when I promised my six-year-old self never to forget being a child, never to grow frightened and dishonest like the grownups I saw, nodding politely to each other without affection, and decided to put my true self in a time capsule for later use.
— Aurora Levins Morales, Getting Home Alive
Children need the lie to be brave enough to sleep in their beds
—  parents need it to be able to get up the next morning.
Motherhood has taught me that love is the best gift you can ever give to your children.
— Gift Gugu Mona
I struggle to listen, to sit, and to study-I would rather play and create art with my brushes and putty.I wish I could focus on things that I know-Like cars, Mars, and playing with dough.
— Brenda Lochinger, I'm Squirrely!
It's children, he thought, that give us our lives; without them we are nothing, we are here and then gone, like the dust.
— Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors
Parenting: Nobody really wants the job, but everybody thinks they can do better.
— Bruce Lansky
Men who try to understand the world without the help of children are like men who try to bake bread without the help of yeast.
— Gavriel Savit, Anna and the Swallow Man
It is not that you give birth to a child that matters most. Rather, it is what you birth into them.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Street children are lovely blossoms just dropped from the tree after a heavy storm. Now they need to be put together with a needle and threads of security and shelter to live into a beautiful circle of life’s garland
— Munia Khan
Help your child see others' emotions as well as experiencing his or her own without imposing your judgment.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
First off, I call them "children", not "kids". I am a child, and I am not ashamed to be one; time will cure this unfortunate condition. "Kid" is the cutesy name adults call children, because they think "child" sounds too scientific and clinical. I refuse to call myself by their idiotic pet name. Your grandmother might call you "Snugglepants Lovebotton", but that's not how you introduce yourself to strangers. I also refuse to use terms like "teen", "tween", and etc. I find them patronizing and putrid. They are fake words, used to disguise the truth--that anyone under the age of eighteen is legally (and that's the only thing that matters) a child.
— Josh Lieb, I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President
Your roots aren't to be found in your childhood so much as in your child. It's he who provides your link to the world, and home is wherever he is.
— Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned
The best gift you can give your children is to keep yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually healthy.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
My son, Edward, at 4, to a neighbor boy who was being a pain in our backyard: "Oh, don't whine. my mom will throw you right out of here.
— Cynthia Jo Mahaffey
I have nothing against kids—as long as they go home with their parents at the end of the day.
— Michael A. Stackpole, I, Jedi
Children teach us more than our elders because they are real reflector of our society.
— Nature Shreshtha
Children teach us more than our elders because they are a real reflector of our society.
— Nature Shreshtha
Children are the angels that the gods give us.
— Avijeet Das
We must remain calm as parents and try not to lose control of ourselves, when we become parents. For how can we expect our kids to control themselves if we can’t do it? That seems unfair.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
He believed in magic, like a child, and in ghosts, like a peasant.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.
— Peter Wessel Zapffe
Moments later as we crossed the road to the 50’s diner, I recited the restaurant rules in my head one more time.Rule one: Keep your hands clean.Rule two: Careful with the food trays.Rule three: Visit the soda fountain as often as you like, but don’t make yourself sick.Rule four: Enjoy the poodle skirt.
— Kate Willis, Enjoy the Poodle Skirt
Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper-thin slice of intersection between those spheres.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
A man enrich his community. A man teach and display leadership qualities for his children. A man by his presence is safety and security for his Queen. The best the thing a man can do for this world, his children and Queen is be a man.
— Carlos Wallace
Worrying about life’s circumstances of those I love, but over which I have no control is a dangerous, never-ending and pointless game to play.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
The phrase ‘Boys will be boys,’ reflects that a male child is expected to be unpredictable and occasionally troublesome.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
When your kids get excited, let them have that feeling and share the excitement with them. Sharing makes it bigger.
— Iben Dissing Sandahl, The Danish Way of Parenting: What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids
Because a child is bound to grow, society is intent upon cultivating the child’s mind to mature into a very specific type of responsible person. Children take great pleasure in small things that have no practical purpose in their dreamy world where they can be as wild as wind. Each year a part of the child dies, as it is burden with adult responsibilities.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
I would like to do more in appreciating the mindset of the child. Maybe it has something to do with taking ourselves very seriously and with great disregard, as well as having a healthy does of awe and doubt for all else.
— Meia Geddes, Love Letters to the World
If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I wondered when I had forgotten that, despite everything, he was still just a child.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicious demons in placid disguises, innocent eyes so wide, hidden minds so dark. Does evil exist? Is it a force, some deadly possession that slips into the unwary? Is it a thing separate and thus subject to accusation and blame, distinct from the one it has used? Does it flit from soul to soul, weaving its diabolical scheme in all the unseen places, snarling into knots tremulous fears and appalling opportunity, stark terrors and brutal self-interest? Or is the dread word nothing more than a quaint and oh so convenient encapsulation of all those traits distinctly lacking moral context, a sweeping generalization embracing all things depraved and breath takingly cruel, a word to define that peculiar glint in the eye—the voyeur to one’s own delivery of horror, of pain and anguish and impossible grief?Give the demon crimson scales, slashing talons. Tentacles and dripping poison. Three eyes and six slithering tongues. As it crouches there in the soul, its latest abode in an eternal succession of abodes, may every god kneel in prayer.But really. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectification is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity—the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us.But if that is too dire, let’s call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.There are extremities of behaviour that seem, at the time, perfectly natural, indeed reasonable. They are arrived at suddenly, or so it might seem, but if one looks the progression reveals itself, step by step, and that is a most sad truth.
— Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds
Children must be taught how to think and not what to think. This is the responsibility of parents, if not parents, than the great community, who must equip them with the weapons of discernment and knowledge.
— VD.
I would like to say to the men and women of the generations which will come after us: you will look back at us with astonishment. You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little, at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take. At the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive. At the great truths staring us in the face which we failed to see, at the great truths we grasped at but could not get our fingers quite 'round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little. But what you will never know that it was how we were thinking of you and for you that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little that we have done. That it was in the thought of your larger realization and fuller life that we have found consolation for the futilities of our own. All I aspire to be and was not, comforts me.
— Olive Schreiner, Woman and Labor
If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions