“Ah! what would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.”
“Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”
“It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snow-blower, or vacuum cleaner.”
“The planting of trees in the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.”
“The only moral lesson which is suited for a child, the most important lesson for every time of life, is this: ''Never hurt anybody.''”
“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.”
“I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.”
“Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.”
“One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.”
“The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.”
“Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they'll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.”
“Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.”
“A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.”
“Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.”
“The first duty to children is to make them happy, If you have not made them so, you have wronged them, No other good they may get can make up for that.”
“She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”
“Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves.”
“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.”
“Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.”
“Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.”
“Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.”
“Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want.”
“Normally, children learn to gauge rather accurately from the tone of their parent's voice how seriously to take his threats. Of course, they sometimes misjudge and pay the penalty.”
“In all our efforts to provide ''advantages'' we have actually produced the busiest, most competitive, highly pressured, and over-organized generation of youngsters in our history.''”
“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
“Children are curious and are risk takers. They have lots of courage. They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous. A child initially trusts life and the processes of life.”
“A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far.”
“As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children”
“Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.”