Children
Quotes - Accept the children the way we accept Trees
“Accept
the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a
blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to
change, you love them as they are.”
―
Isabel Allende
“So
I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children
it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave
in a totalitarian state.”
―
sylvia plath, The Bell Jar
“All
children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the
way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in
a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I
suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to
her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was
all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she
must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the
end.”
―
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“A
child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian
parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way,
would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children
themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will
immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject-
when she becomes old enough to do so.”
―
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
“Your
kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your
whole time trying to correct them.”
―
Bill Ayers
“God
is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent on revenge against His children for
failing to live up to his impossible standards.”
―
Walt Whitman
“I don't
remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even
know exist until you love a child.”
―
Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“You
know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a
good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don't stay children
forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some
people grow up sooner, many grow up later. Some never really do. But just
remember that some people in this world are older versions of those same kids
we cry for.”
―
Ashly Lorenzana
“You
think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like
you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never
knew you never knew." - Pocahontas”
―
Disney
“May
what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it
is with children.”
―
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Adults
constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to
handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and
gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately
have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell
and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to
open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get
them back the way they were.”
―
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“My
daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that
their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the
children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are
empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of
my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the
shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the
toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says
'PRIVATE--GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading.”
―
Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
“Nothing
you do for children is ever wasted.”
―
Garrison Keillor, Leaving Home
“Grown-up
people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the
most difficult case.”
―
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
“When
you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when
they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly,
providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers
of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to
think.”
―
Bertrand Russell
“Sweater,
n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.”
―
Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
“Babies
are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it
for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live
with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked
flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are
melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their
existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them
against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back
into your body.
But
from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child.
That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.
In
the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and
solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows,
too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing
through the translucent flesh.
The
bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The
process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of
adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the
multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.
In
the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes
the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as
an insect in amber.”
―
Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber
“It's
not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world.
It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and
heartless.”
―
L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and
Stages
“It's
a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most
disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or
she is wonderful.”
―
Roald Dahl, Matilda
“We
are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and
sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.”
―
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
