quotes, quotations and passages about children

Every child comes with
the message that God is not
yet discouraged of us.

Rabindranath Tagore

And then I thought: what fools we are with our children--always
plotting what we shall make of them, always planning for a future
that never comes, always intent on what they may be,
never accepting what they are.

Howard Vincent O'Brien

It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music,
and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the
possibilities that lie within the human spirit--enable them to see visions
and dream dreams.

Eric Anderson

Children are not casual guests in our home. They have
been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving
them and instilling a foundation of values on
which their future lives will be built.

James Dobson

Those who help a child help humanity with an immediateness
which no other help given to human creature in any other
stage of human life can possibly give again.

Phillips Brooks

Sometimes looking deep into the eyes of a child,
you are conscious of meeting a glance full
of wisdom. The child has known nothing yet
but love and beauty. All this piled-up world
knowledge you have acquired is unguessed at
by her. And yet you meet this wonderful look
that tells you in a moment more than all the
years of experience have seemed to teach.

Hildegarde Hawthorne

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love
of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the
real living of life with the feeling of freedom and self-expression. Play is the
business of childhood, and its continuation in later years is the prolongation of youth.

Walter Rauschenbach

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 children
as living arrows are sent forth.

Khalil Gibran

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Our religion is one which challenges the ordinary human standards by holding that
the ideal of life is the spirit of a little child. We tend to glorify adulthood and
wisdom and worldly prudence, but the Gospel reverses all this. The Gospel says
that the inescapable condition of entrance into the divine fellowship is
that we turn and become as a little child. As against our natural judgment
we must become tender and full of wonder and unspoiled by the hard
skepticism on which we so often pride ourselves. But when we really look
into the heart of a child, willful as he or she may be, we are often ashamed.
God has sent children into the world, not only to replenish it, but to serve as
sacred reminders of something ineffably precious which we are always in danger
of losing. The sacrament of childhood is thus a continuing revelation.

Elton Trueblood

Love your children with all your hearts, love them enough to discipline them
before it is too late. . . Praise them for important things, even if you have to
stretch them a bit. Praise them a lot. They live on it like bread and butter
and they need it more than bread and butter.

Lavina Christensen Fugal

I must take issue
with the term "a mere
child," for it has
been my invariable
experience that the
company of a mere
child is infinitely
preferable to that
of a mere adult.

Fran Lebowitz

I believe the powers of observation in numbers of very young children to be
quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most
grown people who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety
be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather,
as I generally observe such people to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness,
and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance
they have preserved from their childhood.

Charles Dickens

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered,
stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to.
In the final analysis, it is not what you do for your children but
what you have taught them to do for themselves
that will make them successful human beings.

Ann Landers

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

Tom Robbins

To carry feelings of childhood into the powers of adulthood,
to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty
with the appearances which every day for years has rendered familiar,
this is the character and privilege of genius,
and one of the marks which distinguish it from talent.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from
the person of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of
baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief;
it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn
pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness and
nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul.

Francis Thompson

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Every child should know a hill,
And the clean joy of running down its long slope
With the wind in his hair.
She should know a tree--
The comfort of its cool lap of shade,
And the supple strength of its arms
Balancing her between earth and sky
So she is a creature of both.
He should know bits of singing water--
The strange mysteries of its depths,
And the long sweet grasses that border it.
Every child should know some scrap
Of uninterrupted sky, to shout against;
And have one star, dependable and bright,
For wishing on.

Edna Casler Joll

children 2 - children 3 - children 4

For a Child

Your friends shall be the tall wind,
The river and the tree;
The sun that laughs and marches,
The swallow and the sea.

Your prayers shall be the murmur
Of grasses in the rain;
The song of wildwood thrushes
That makes God glad again.

And you shall run and wander
And you shall dream and sing
Of brave things and of bright things
Beyond the swallow's wing.

And you shall envy no man,
Nor hurt your heart with sighs,
For I will keep you simple
That God may make you wise.

Fanny Stearns Davis

For the children of the world
Every single little boy and girl
Heaven plants a special seed
And we must have faith for these
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in the Father's eyes
Like the Father may we see
That they have a destiny
And give them the light of love to lead
Through the darkness around us now
To a place where hope is found

Sims/Grant/Kirkpatrick

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

Luther Burbank

The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child.

Joe Houldsworth

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children
occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you.

We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions
on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence.

We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid
the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength.

We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part
in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling.

Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were
the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned
to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Midge Decter

The Kingdom of Ideas
Wilferd A. Peterson

To enter the Kingdom of Ideas, become as a little child.

"There is nothing more resembles God's eyes," wrote Nikos Kazantzakis, "than the eyes of a child."

A child has wide-eyed interest in everything. As God did, he looks upon the world and finds it good.

A child does not block the flow of goodness into her life by thoughts of fear and prejudice. Her mind is as open as are her eyes. She experiences the wonder of life.

A child is an explorer. He is curious. He wants to know what is on the other side of the moon, or the room. He investigates things to find out what they are and how they work. He asks questions. He loves to experiment.

A child lives in the world of fantasy where all great ideas are born. It was probably a child who first dreamed of flying through the air, hearing voices and music from the sky, penetrating to the ocean depths. Before the reality comes the dream.

A child has the magic gift of imagination. She sees things that aren't there. She creates in her mind the kind of a world she wants to live in. She visualizes things as she wants them to be.

A child has freshness of response. To him the world is ever new and full of miracles and adventures. He reacts spontaneously to the discoveries he makes each day.

A child follows the simple way. She does not become bogged down in the complex and the obscure. She is natural, direct and genuine.

A child is confident. He has not learned all of the reasons why a thing cannot be done. He ignores obstacles because he does not know they exist.

This we learn from the child: The more childlike we are in our approach to problems, the more creative we will be. Try the fresh approach of a child.

A great person is one who has not lost the child's heart.

Mencius

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I love little children, and it is not a slight thing when they,
who are fresh from God, love us.

Charles Dickens

children 2 - children 3 - children 4

We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving “village.” And to pursue a life of purpose.

We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution.

We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come.

Raffi