c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. . . . Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I am convinced that an immense number of people who have children should not have them, and do not particularly want them, except as "symbols" of family life. What they want are ideal children, not real ones; and as soon as the real ones show no intention of conforming to the ideal in the parent's mind, they are treated as burdens, shipped away to school or otherwise neglected.
— Sydney J. Harris, The Best of Sydney J. Harris
It occurred to Raule that all children were monsters in the world and were instinctively aware of it. They were reminded of their anomalous nature by adults, whom they failed to resemble, and with whose habitations and tools their bodies were at odds. This was surely why the little girl played with the sequins so solemnly and with such intense concentration. She was doing nothing less than conjuring, out of pattern and colour, a world that conformed to her desires and obeyed her will. The boy, on the other hand, showed with the whole attitude of his being that he knew there was only the one world and he would kill it if he could.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
Beating children will not make them wise. They will grow wilder and wilder and the cane will feel like paper on their skins.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Genuine love for a child, it seems to me, must include a desire for his maturity and ultimately his independence. WAtching a personality unfold is perhaps the deepest pleasure of parenthood; wishing, or trying, to retard this growth is one of the deepest sins.
— Sydney J. Harris, Best of Sydney Harris
True Courage is when you are afraid of something but go through with it anyway
— Victor Castelo, Tommy The Courageous Bird
Fantasy isn't about escape; it's a survival mechanism. It's a way to deal with things that are so much bigger than you are. So I think fantasy is special, something to be cherished and protected because it's a very fragile thing and without it, we're so defenseless, we're paralyzed.
— The Martian Child David Gerrold
A boy, Ranga, is the light in his father’s eye and the love in his mother’s heart.
— Ian B.G. Burns
Angel of Fire is about an ordinary boy to whom extraordinary things happen
— Wendy Milton, Angel of Fire
If a child hasn't been given spiritual values within the family setting, they have no familiarity with the values that are necessary for the just and peaceful functioning in society.
— Eunice Baumann-Nelson Ph.D PENOBSCOT
Parents don't know their children at all.No one knows anyone, in fact.
— Jenny Downham, You Against Me
No matter what the delusions are, parents do not really know their children
— Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People
If I were flying, I would travel to a perfect place. A place with frosted cakes and beautiful flowers and excellent trees to climb and absolutely no doldrums.
— Kyo Maclear, Virginia Wolf
I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I wanted to shout down to him, to warn him that he was giving flowers to a monster, but I did not.
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Some scientists were conducting an experiment, he said, trying to gauge the impact of abuse on children. Ducks, like people, develop bonds between mother and young. They call it imprinting. So the scientists set out to test how that imprint bond would be affected by abuse. The control group was a real mother duck and her ducklings. For the experimental group, the scientist used a mechanical duck they had created - feathers, sound, and all - which would, at timed intervals, peck the ducklings with its mechanical beak. A painful peck, one a real duck would not give. They varied these groups. Each group was pecked with a different level of frequency. And then they watched the ducklings grow and imprint bond with their mother. Over time, he went on, the ducklings in the control group would waddle along behind their mother. But as they grew, there would be more distance between them. They'd wander and explore.The ducklings with the pecking mechanical mother, though, followed much more closely. Even the scientists were stunned to discover that the group that bonded and followed most closely was the one that had been pecked repeatedly with the greatest frequency. The more the ducklings were pecked and abused, the more closely they followed. The scientist repeated the experiment and got the same results.
— Rachel Reiland, Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form.
— Christine Northrup
Our children cannot be assumed to follow in our footsteps, assuage our losses, or compensate for our inadequacies.
— Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids
He was not being courageous as he bore the freezing stream for his wife and children. He simply chose between the lesser of two evils—the pain and suffering he would endure in the river, a physical pain that he could stand to bear, or the pain and suffering he would feel if he had to watch his family wade across and freeze. It was not a decision. The choice had already been made the moment Ole proposed marriage to his wife and welcomed these beautiful daughters into the world.
— Sage Steadman, Upon Destiny's Song
Young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened to whatever shape you've trained them.
— Erasmus
When parents neglect their responsibility to correct and discipline their children society suffers. The results are crimes and harm committed against others.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones!The Brothers KaramazovIvan to Alyosha, on the suffering and torture of children, "Book V - Pro and Contra, Chapter 4 - Rebellion.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In between every action and reaction, there is a space. Usually the space is extremely small because we react so quickly, but take notice of that space and expand it. Be aware in that space that you have a choice to make. You can choose how to respond, and choose wisely, because the next step you take will teach your child how to handle anger and could either strengthen or damage your relationship.
— Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting
Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Train up a child in the way he should go
—  even when he is old he will not depart from it.
I want to know we're not pushing children toward the traditions of life, but instead cultivating them to grow in their own specific purposes, and make the dreams of their youth become realities as they age.
— Ashley Ormon
He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers also.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Ok, I see. When they say Charles Wovenu is passing by, everyone wants to see Charles Wovenu. But when they say to a child that "Bibi" is passing by, every child is hiding for "Bibi". What makes the difference is the impacts.
— Israelmore Ayivor
When my children complain that I'm forgetful, I remind them that DAD is just ADD spelled sideways.
— Harvey Stanbrough
Kids are trusting and wise and I cannot think of a less useful combination to be born with. The wisdom lets children know who they are. And then the trust lets everyone else take that knowledge away.
— Sean Wilsey, Oh the Glory of it All
I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've gotCould see all kinds of things other people could not!So then why get upset if somebody like meTries to look at the world just a bit differently?
— Al Yankovic, My New Teacher and Me!
And children are still the way you were ...as a child, sad and happy in just the same way and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else’s children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose.
— Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.
Women and children make you weak
—  get rid of them when you are in war.
I remember the shift that occurred after Abby was born - there'd been the great big before, where dying grandparents and natural disasters on the news were sad but mostly distant concerns. But then I became a mother, and when that happens, you cross a line that makes all loss a crushing, personal matter.
— DEB CALLETI
LOOKINGThe world goes by, and what have I to do with it? I merely observe how the geese stretch their necks towards the orange rim of sky. I watch how light fades and children make their way home, hungry and tired. The bushes outside become ghosts while baths run and kitchen windows steam up with the cooking. This is the smell of our home, where I have a place in the wrinkled hours making beds and hugging boys awake. This is the sound of the house where I feel out lives into words, translate ragged nights and days into something whole, or try to. You may look if you wish..... The world goes by, and what have you or I to do with it, except perhaps for looking... ?
— Jay Woodman, SPAN
When children are given spiritual guidance, they grow-up learning to know how to pray and praise God. Even though they might not be a religious person in their later years, those values they were taught are the things they remember in their times of need.
— Ellen J. Barrier
I remember the sift that occurred after Abby was born - there'd been the great big before, where dying grandparents and natural disasters on the news were sad but mostly distant concerns. But then I became a mother, and when that happens, you cross a line that makes all loss a crushing, personal matter.
— DEB CALLETI
Teach your children that a person is more valuable than any treasure found on this earth, teach them to love, teach them to sing, and dance, teach them to be courageous, and tell them they will be victorious on anything they put their heart and mind to, teach them honesty, and to never give up hope.
— Martin Suarez
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.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
So often, children are punished for being human. Children are not allowed to have grumpy moods, bad days, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes, yet we adults have them all the time! We think if we don't nip it in the bud, it will escalate and we will lose control. Let go of that unfounded fear and give your child permission to be human. We all have days like that. None of us are perfect, and we must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves. All of the punishments you could throw at them will not stamp out their humanity, for to err is human, and we all do it sometimes.
— Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Do we not see the influence we have when we say we believe in one thing, but our children see us living something else? Do we not realize how little we encourage our children to actually decide what they believe, declare what they believe, and then live by it? Whether it’s religion, politics, sports, or societal norms. It is not our place to tell our kids what to think. It is our place to teach our kids to think correctly. If we do this, we need have no fear of what they will decide for themselves and how strongly they’ll stand behind it. A man will follow his own convictions to his death, but he’ll only follow another man’s convictions until he steps in manure.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
When Aziza first spotted Mariam in the morning, her eyes always sprang open, and she began mewling and squirming in her mother's grip. She thrust her arms toward Mariam, demanding to be held, her tiny hands opening and closing urgently, on her face a look of both adoration and quivering anxiety..."Why have you pinned your little heart to an old, ugly hag like me?" Mariam would murmur into Aziza's hair... "What have I got to give you?"But Aziza only muttered contentedly and dug her face in deeper. And when she did that, Mariam swooned. Her eyes watered. Her heart took flight. And she marveled at how, after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
Dads. Do you honestly expect anybody to believe that you can’t find 20 minutes to step away from your computer or turn off the television to play with your child? It has to happen every single day. Do you not understand that children will hinge their entire facet of trust on whether or not their dad plays with them and how involved he is when he plays with them? Do you know the damage you do by not playing with your children every day?
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
...The life of the parents is the only thing that makes good children. Parents should be very patient and ‘saintlike’ to their children. They should truly love their children. And the children will share this love! For the bad attitude of the children, says father Porphyrios, the ones who are usually responsible for it are their parents themselves. The parents don’t help their children by lecturing them and repeating to them ‘advices’, or by making them obeying strict rules in order to impose discipline. If the parents do not become ‘saints’ and truly love their children and if they don’t struggle for it, then they make a huge mistake. With their wrong and/or negative attitude the parents convey to their children their negative feelings. Then their children become reactive and insecure not only to their home, but to the society as well...
— Elder Porphyrios
I’m just happy to have experienced life
—  to have had a beautiful son and to have loved.
God never leaves His children to wander alone. We are always surrounded with unconditional love.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)
— Christopher Hitchens, The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens
One of the nicest things you can do to kick-start your children’s day is to tell them honestly they look nice as they head out the door. This easy, five-second exchange says to your child: “I see you; I notice you; I love you.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
And if you are a mom who has watched your child’s father leave, my heart goes out to you. I also pray that you had no part in it. I pray that you didn’t make it impossible for him while he was there. I pray that you didn’t try and force him to live up to impossible expectations. And, I pray that if he is a good man and he wants to be there in his child’s life that you love your child enough to let him. Even if that seems impossible to you.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Where do starfish come from?” asked Sam.“From the sky,” answered Stella. “Starfish are shooting stars that fell in love with the sea.”“Weren’t the stars afraid of drowning?” asked Sam.“No,” said Stella. “They all learned how to swim.
— Marie-Louise Gay, Stella, Star of the Sea
And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat" (23).
— Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
People who have babies tell me I will know a love that is beyond anything I can imagine, and a joy that is indescribable. Love and joy? That sounds horrifying. I have no way of knowing whether I can handle either of those. I'm much better with need and fear. They are what ground me.
— Marc Maron, Attempting Normal
Children have no business expressing opinions on anything except "Do you have enough room in the toes?
— Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye
And then there will be the times when I see you laughing. Like the time you’ll be playing with the neighbor’s puppy, poking your hands through the chain-link fence separating our back yards, and you’ll be laughing so hard you’ll start hiccupping. The puppy will run inside the neighbor’s house, and your laughter will gradually subside, letting you catch your breath. Then the puppy will come back to the fence to lick your fingers again, and you’ll shriek and start laughing again. It will be the most wonderful sound I could ever imagine, a sound that makes me feel like a fountain, or a wellspring.
— Ted Chiang, Lightspeed Magazine, December 2012
It is impossible to estimate full influence of the reading of the Word in a home day after day and year after year. It filters into the hearts of the young. It is absorbed into their souls. It colors all their thoughts. It is wrought into the very fiber of their minds. It imbues them with its own spirit. It’s holy teachings become the principles of their lives, which rule their conduct and shape all their actions.
— J.R.    Miller
They had laid the tender, down-ruffled little bird on a platter and appeared now to be pondering a way to eat out its heart without causing it distress.
— Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it?
— Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup
I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I’m a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child’s life, and in a child’s level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Dads. Do you not realize that your child needs to feel your skin on his? Do you not realize the incredible and powerful bond that skin on skin contact with your daughter will give you? Do you not understand the permanent mental connections that are made when you stroke your son’s bare back or rub your daughter’s bare tummy while you tell bedtime stories? And if any idiot says anything about that being inappropriate, you’re gonna get kicked in the face, first by me, and then by every other good dad out there. Touching your child is your duty as a father.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
A parent who cannot provide the basic needs of two children, must not even bear one.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn't keep doing it then, by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it.
— Caitlin Moran, Moranthology
Good fathers, and by that I mean real fathers who are there, have the ability to change almost every social problem we now find ourselves facing. I’d be assumptive enough to say that there isn’t a single type of crime or a single problem so big that it couldn’t be fixed or wiped out if fathers would just step up.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Then I probably fainted. The woman at the registration desk managed to put on a sympathetic expression afterward, as if she wanted to ask, "What are you going to do now?" I told her not to worry, I was really leaving, I was going home.But go home where? Without my children I no longer had a home.
— Barbara Honigmann, A Love Made Out of Nothing & Zohara's Journey
Tradition in the nursery has acted as a severe editor.
— Walter Jerrold
Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.
— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody's.
— Kifah Shah
He slid his hand onto Riley's bare abdomen. "I got to thinkin' that a few years down the line, when yer older, what if that was our baby and I could feel it right here under my hand. Feel the life we'd created."Riley's eyes moistened. "Girl or boy?""Doesn't matter. If it's a girl, we can name her after my gran. Her name was Emily Rose.""Hmm...I like that. Maybe the boy could be Paul Arthur, like my dad.""Yeah, that works. But that's all the way down the line, isn't it?" It might never come to pass.
— Jana Oliver, Foretold
Just as verbally and physically abused children internalize blame, so do incest victims. However, in incest, the blame is compounded by the shame. The belief that ‘it’s all my fault’ is never more intense than with the incest victim. This belief fosters strong feelings of self-loathing and shame. In addition to having somehow to cope with the actual incest, the victim must now guard against being caught and exposed as a ‘dirty, disgusting’ person
— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
Out of all the things I do, I think being a mom is the most important and satisfying.
— Michelle M. Pillow
I guess you just have to trust your kids, trust that their innate interest in life will win out in the end, don’t you think?
— George Saunders, Tenth of December
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mains sales
At a certain point in her life, she realises it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.
— Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
A blown kiss is not a proper kiss. Hugs and kisses should be hugs and kisses, not breaths of air. I am tired of breaths of air and not enough hugs and kisses.
— Claire  King, The Night Rainbow
A person can have a happy and fulfilling life without children.
— Judy Blume, Summer Sisters
Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.
— Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Children are infinitely credulous. My Lisa was a dull child, but even so she came up with things that pleased and startled me. 'Are there dragons?' she asked. I said that there were not. 'Have there ever been?' I said all the evidence was to the contrary. 'But if there is a word dragon,' she said, 'then once there must have been dragons.
— Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore.
— Mary Harris Jones
A bad thing happened to you kids, Dad said. But it could have been worse.So much worse, Mom said.But because of you kids, Dad said, it wasn't.You did so good, Mom said.Did beautiful, Dad said.
— George Saunders, Tenth of December
No parent/home/child/teacher/school has an all-round 100 percent wholeness. We all have limitations and problems. But I must never think it is all or nothing. Perhaps I'd like to live in the country, but I don't. Well, maybe I can get the family to a park two times a week, and out to the country once every two weeks. Maybe I have to send my child to a not-so-good school. Well, maybe we can read one or two good books together aloud. If you can't give them everything, give them something.
— Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, For the Children's Sake
...eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness.
— Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Children do not find fault with their parents until later. In the beginning, the love you get is the love that sets.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
I like Mr. Dickens’ books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray’s daughters.
— David Markson, The Last Novel
It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-A sunny day with the leaves just turning,The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you playYour first game of fotball, then, like a satelliteWrenched from its orbit, go drifting awayBehind a scatter of boys. I can seeYou walking away from me towards the schoolwith the pathos of a half-fledged thing set freeInto a wilderness, the gait of oneWho finds no path where the path should be.That hesitant figure, eddying awayLike a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,Has something I never quite grasp to conveyAbout nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorchingOrdeals which fire one's irresolute clay.I had worse partings, but none that soGnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughlySaying what God alone could perfectly show-How selfhood begins with a walking away,And love proved in the letting go.
— Cecil Day-Lewis
if you want to understand your child better then see through the child's eye.
— Revathi Sankaran
I don’t know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children’s happiness. Group crying, he could stand, but group laughing was asking for it, especially at the dinner table.
— David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Today our children are our reflection. Tomorrow they will be our shadows.
— Maralee McKee, Manners That Matter for Moms
I really want to believe that when our Quiet Waters kids wake up in the middle of the night, scared, they’ll remember being in their bunks with John and Kate and Whit and me right there protecting them,” he said. “I hope we gave them that sense of belonging because I know there’ll be times in their lives when grasping at those bonds could mean the difference between making it and not.
— Laura Anderson Kurk, Perfect Glass
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
— Christopher Smart, The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart: Volume I: Jubilate Agno
There were some children round him playing in the dust on the paths. They had long fair hair, and with very earnest faces and solemn attention were making little mountains of sand so as to stamp on them and squash them underfoot.Pierre was going through one of those gloomy days when one looks into every corner of one's soul and shakes out every crease.'Our occupations are like the work of those kids,' he thought. Then he wondered whether after all the wisest course in life was not to beget two or three of these little useless beings and watch them grow with complacent curiosity. And he was touched by the desire to marry. You aren't so lost when you're not alone any more. At any rate you can hear somebody moving near you in times of worry and uncertainty, and it is something anyway to be able to say words of love to a woman when you are feeling down.He began thinking about women.His knowledge of them was very limited, as all he had had in the Latin Quarter was affairs of a fortnight or so, dropped when the month's money ran out and picked up again or replaced the following month. Yet kind, gentle, consoling creatures must exist. Hadn't his own mother brought sweet reasonableness and charm to his father's home? How he would have loved to meet a woman, a real woman!He leaped up, determined to go and pay a little visit to Mme Rosémilly.But he quickly sat down again. No, he didn't like that one!
— Guy de Maupassant, Pierre et Jean
She was mined for the childrenin her, one daughter, then another, a short seam, quick to clay, and not a single son to save them.
— Robert Wrigley
Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrova could not be...Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace...hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children--the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Gusty McCabe, tha's m' name and tellin' stories, tha's m' game, If they all ain't true I ain't t' blame, I'll tell 'em all just the same.
— Gusty McCabe, The Most Important Critter in the Whole Wide World: Why the Coyote Howls at Night
And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Meddey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death.
— Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist
[I]f we can bring our children understanding, comfort, and hopefulness when they need this kind of support, then they are more likely to grow into adults who can find these resources within themselves later on. (from the introduction)
— Fred Rogers, The Mister Rogers' Parenting Book: Helping To Understand Your Young Child
The best gift you can give to your kids is a happy marriage.
— Ricky Shetty
Children have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught the proper things to be shocked at.
— John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids
A mother is a child's first looking glass into the world.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Children get food shelter pocket money longholidays and love, all of it apparently free gratis, and most of the little fools think it's a sort of compensation for having been born. 'There are no strings on me!' They sang; but I, pinnoccio, saw the strings. Parents are impelled by the profit motive - nothing more, nothing less. For their attentions, they expected, from me, the immense dividend of greatness.
— Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.
— Zadie Smith, White Teeth
In a way that I haven’t yet figured out how to fully articulate, I believe that children who get to see bald eagles, coyotes, deer, moose, grouse, and other similar sights each morning will have a certain kind of matrix or fabric or foundation of childhood, the nature and quality of which will be increasing rare and valuable as time goes on, and which will be cherished into adulthood, as well as becoming- and this is a leap of faith by me- a source of strength and knowledge to them somehow. That the daily witnessing of the natural wonders is a kind of education of logic and assurance that cannot be duplicated by any other means, or in other place: unique and significant, and, by God, still somehow relevant, even now, in the twenty-first century. For as long as possible, I want my girls to keep believing that beauty, though not quite commonplace and never to pass unobserved or unappreciated, is nonetheless easily witnessed on any day, in any given moment, around any forthcoming bend. And that the wild world has a lovely order and pattern and logic, even in the shouting, disorderly chaos of breaking-apart May and reassembling May. That if there can be a logic an order even in May, then there can be in all seasons and all things.
— Rick Bass
Many of our elected officials have virtually handed the keys to our schools over to corporate interests. Presidential commissions on education are commonly chaired by the executives of large companies.
— Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards"
It is not possible to satisfy women," a friend said. "We are disturbed if we have children too young. Disturbed if we have then later. Disturbed if we don't have children at all.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Residents of the squatter community of Christiana, Denmark, for example, have a Christmastide ritual where they dress in Santa suits, take toys from department stores and distribute them to children on the street, partly just so everyone can relish the images of the cops beating down Santa and snatching the toys back from crying children.
— David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
No, Roger had not seen the funny side. But there had been a moment when, after looking at his watch, he had thought: I can remember when Christmas morning would start at about half past ten with a glass of Buck's Fizz in bed. Now it begins at half past five, with a test of my fine motor skills and ability to read Korean.
— John Lanchester, Capital
The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.
— Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed
Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa’s forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. “What?
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but the presence of peace and clarity.To make a home into a sanctuary, we must be willing to make room in our hearts for one another's limitations, as well as our gifts. For it is here in this sacred space of the home and family, so brimming with life, so full of every emotion available to our hearts, that we learn what it means to love within all the nuances of an intimate relationship.
— Shea Darian, Sanctuaries of Childhood: Nurturing a Child's Spiritual Life
He was taking a leap here, negotiating with a crackhead, under the table, in a dark cantina. The courage etched on his face came from loving Aidia so much he’d close his eyes and walk through fire to see her safe.
— Laura Anderson Kurk, Perfect Glass
I think love is sort of a con you play on yourself. I think the whole conception of love is something the previous generation invents to justify having created you. You know I think the real reason children are born is because parents are so bored they have children to amuse themselves. They're so bored they don't have anything else to do so they have a child because that will keep them busy for a while. Then to justify to the kid the reason he exists they tell him there's such a thing as love and that's where you come from because me and your daddy or me and your mommy were in love and that's why you exist. When actually it was because they were bored out of their minds.
— Richard Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp
God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
I began to see that creating a healthy family, in which members develop the ability for mutual respect and caring, is a prerequisite for a more peaceful world. For, it is the family that creates the social fabric of our culture, as Mahatma Gandhi so poignantly illustrated, when he said:If we are to teach real peace on this world...we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their own innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless, idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungeringSweeping floors, wiping noses, singing children to sleep...such is the work of peacemakers. Blessed be the peacemakers.
— Shea Darian, Sanctuaries of Childhood: Nurturing a Child's Spiritual Life
She found herself wondering at what point in her life she had ceased to be Gulliver and had become the strings holding him to the ground.
— Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners
I should like to know what sacrifices they make. I think it's the children who make the sacrifices. When I want to eat gooseberries and am not allowed to, the sacrifice is _mine_ not _Mother's_.
— Grete Lainer, A Young Girl's Diary
Stealing is wrong Billy
— David Chuka, Billy and Monster: The Superhero with Fart Powers
There were no fear of death in children’s eyes because they had seen hanging, stoning to death and chopping heads in playgrounds and parks.
— M.F. Moonzajer
We were still children and residing in the mosque from morning to evening. We were about to turn into monsters.
— M.F. Moonzajer
For a lack of education, a child's future may hold no fortune.
— Dennis E. Adonis
Yes, and our sister's sons are candid now about a creepy business which used to worry them a lot: They cannot find their mother or their father in their memories anywhere - not anywhere. The goat farmer, whose name is James Carmalt Adams, Jr., said this about it to me, tapping his forehead with his fingertips: "It isn't the museum, it should be." The museums in children's minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror - to protect the children from eternal grief.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
World is brighter with the happiness of children.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
I enjoy load shedding in Nepal, when it allows me to witness the dancing of fireflies in the next field, and at the same time to hear children playing a chanting clapping game because there is no TV to waste their time on.
— Andrew James Pritchard
He preferred smart questions to smart answers.
— Yōko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor
It's the curse of motherhood. You're required to love us even when we vex you.
— Julia Quinn, The Duke and I
I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
For a child, it is in the simplicity of play that the complexity of life is sorted like puzzle pieces joined together to make sense of the world.
— L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages
There is nothing better for your family than for you to be at your best, for you to be at your own peace, for you to be showing them in every way who you are, and what you stand for.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Save the children, save mankind.
— Aaron B. Powell, Priority
It's an awe-filled, wonderful, terrifying act to have a child, for you suddenly wear your heart on the outside of your body. You risk a little more each day as he wanders from your arms into the world.
— Susan May Warren, Take a Chance on Me
A child is a best story teller if it is encouraged to do so. Parents shouldn't get confused between a lie and an excuse. They should let their children open for excuses and see how many fantasies come into existence.
— Anurag Bhatt, Krishna and the Lake of Souls
Smile at the Fates and you will feel less their Slave.
— Denise Sevier Fries, Parca's Forsaken
What a terrible thing it is for children to see death, you say. We have it all wrong. If you make a child terrified of death, he won't embrace it so easily. And death must be embraced if you wish to follow Christ. Listen to His teaching. 'Unless you become like a child...and unless you take up your cross daily, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.' One is not valuable without the other. Janjic Jovic, The Dance of the Dead, 1959
— Ted Dekker, When Heaven Weeps
What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?
— Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts
Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons.
— Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
What would your shoes say about the things you do everyday?
— Sherley Mondesir-Prescott, If Your Shoes Could Speak
The spirits of children are remote and wise...
— Frances Cornford
Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.
— Phyllis Theroux, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir
I think children want to believe that they can be heroes too.
— Eleonore Caron, Gizmo and Ellen Mysteries: The Case of the Missing Boy
TIME WENT ON, life with the children unfolding in its own ecosystem, small plastic toys seeming to grow up from the carpet like mushrooms, clothes falling to the floor like autumn leaves. Every once in a while she would blaze through the house and clean everything--at which point, the process would start all over.
— Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners
I couldn’t imagine leaving a child. Not because it was unthinkable, but because I couldn’t imagine having a child to leave.
— V.T. Davy, Black Art
Don't be so quick to count out the teenagers. Some of the world's greatest changes, brilliant poetry, and innovations have come from the teenage mind.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Children remind us that we're all children.
— Marty Rubin
Education is not filling up a box but seeing what you can create with one and don't you ever forget that!
— Jill Telford
Why?' He kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, its tone as pure as marbles swirled around a crystal pail. Why him wun up the tree? Why him nest up theah? Why him gadder nuts? Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward universal knowledge.
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos. Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me. Brand new.News.
— Jeanne Marie Laskas, Growing Girls: The Mother of All Adventures
For that entire journey across the rough terrain of Afghanistan, I never stopped praying that everything of the world could be peaceful, that all lives might return to normal. I believe that wish is universal for every woman who is a mother.For all the horrible happenings that have occurred since I left Afghanistan, I can only think and feel with my mother's heart. For every child lost, a mother's heart harbors the deepest pain. None can see our sons grow to men. None can see our daughters become mothers. No longer can we see the smiles on their faces, or wipe away their tears. My mother's heart feels the pain of every loss, weeping not only for my children, but for the lost children of every mother.
— Najwa bin Laden, Growing Up bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
A child's behavior we see on the surface is the reflection of the feelings that are rooted underneath. We can use topical treatments to try to shape what the behavior looks like, but if we really want things to change, we need to address the roots. Nourish the roots, see the growth.
— Kelly Bartlett
The idea of not being a kid anymore terrifies me. I am an adult and I have been hurled out of the world of boys and girls into the fray of men and women, and expected to function as a grown-up when I never functioned very well as a kid.
— Kelley York, Suicide Watch
They are funny little representatives of simplicity, of awareness. No one is more aware of themselves as these children are. They have nothing, have no one but us, have seemingly no reason to be hopeful...yet they are. They choose to be happy even though the obviously easier choice would be to be frightened or sad and they have real reason to be those things as well. But they have life and faith and hope and love and they choose those things. Their innocence is addicting, their hope is catching and I'm happy to be surrounded by them.
— Fisher Amelie, Vain