Monday, March 23, 2015

Quotes about Children

Group of smiling teenagers having fun
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. Bob Hope

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons and daughters of the Earth. Chief Seattle

Children are our most valuable national resource. Herbert Hoover

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that’s just one of the risks he takes.  Adlai Stevenson

True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin a substance as the air. Shakespeare

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travelers or philosophers. Santayana

Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense.  William Phelps

The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men.  Ambrose Bierce

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.  Franklin P Jones

Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.  Ogden Nash

Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. Unknown

He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable. James Fry

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.  Oscar Wilde

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. Jason Hunter

Children who never come when called will grow up to be doctors. Children who come before they are called will grow up to be lawyers. James Burns 

All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable. Fran Lebowitz

Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. James Thurber

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.  Kin Hubbard

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero… must drink brandy.  Samuel Johnson

A child uneducated is a child lost. John F Kennedy

When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now I know that it is myself, and stick to that.  Robert Louis Stevenson

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. George Bernard Shaw

If parents would only realize how they bore their children. George Bernard Shaw

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. George Bernard Shaw

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. Rachel Carson

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. George Frost

How do you know when you have attained higher skills and abilities? It is when children ask you, “why” and they understand your explanation. David Becks 

Pity is not natural to man, children always are cruel, and savages are always cruel. Samuel Johnson

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children. Clarence Darrow

There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children… with the fact of childbearing out of the center of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women. Margaret Mead

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents; it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. Proverb

Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age regret. Benjamin Disraeli

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. Dwight Eisenhower

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last. Jonathan Swift

Youth is a disease from which we all recover. Dorothy Fuldheim

It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children. Kingsley Amis

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Leo Tolstoy

When I was a kid I respected authority, then as a teenager I gave none; in middle age I expected it; now in old age I live by the word. Horace Dyer

The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy. Ken Watts 

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.  C S Lewis,

Back when I was a boy, it was forty miles to everywhere, uphill both ways and it was always snowing. John Mark

My mother loved children; she would have given anything if I had been one. Groucho Marx

This would be a better world for children if parents had to eat the spinach. Groucho Marx

Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to teach children. W H Auden

This world demands the qualities of youth. Not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, vigor of the emotions, and a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. Robert F. Kennedy

Nature fits all her children with something to do. Lowell

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable. Quentin Crisp

Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children! Robert Hunt

What’s done to children, they will do to society. Unknown

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.  Plato

Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent? My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went. But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin, and think of the places my get-up has been. Peter Sykes

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age. Robert Louis Stevenson

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them. Sigmund Freud

In childhood a woman must be subject to her father; in youth to her husband; when her husband is dead, to her sons. A woman must never be free of subjugation. The Hindu Code of Manu

Princes enjoy themselves like children in the company of ordinary human beings. Edmond Goncourt

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. John Updike

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Nietzsche

Youth and discretion are ill-wedded.  Francis Bacon

Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings. Laurence J Peter

Only mothers can think of the future; because they give birth to it in their children. Maxim Gorky

A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, they do with crippled minds. Malcolm X

How is it children are so intelligent and men so stupid; it must be education that does it. Alexandre Dumas

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience; while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence. Lyman Bryson 

One of the most delightful anecdotes in Brian Jay Jones book: Jim Henson, The Biography, he recounts the way Henson dealt with his son, Brian.  At five years old, Brian worked for a week on his father’s program,  featuring the Muppet's.  At the end of that week, Jim Henson presented his son with a check for $50, explaining that Brian had earned it.  He then suggested they go to the bank, where he would set up an account, and begin earning interest.  As a grown man, Brian reflects on this incident with pride in that his father had shown him the roots of both working and saving.