quotations about children
When people talk about wanting to "have children someday," what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.
PAUL REISER
Babyhood
We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH
Of Woman Born
I didn't want children because I didn't want them to suffer. I had a dog, which suffered enough. I don't even want a goldfish or a turtle. I have a desert plant in my house that needs a glass of water maybe once a year, which I can deliver.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Life's Work: An Interview with Marina Abramovic", Harvard Business Review, November 2016
The deeds of the children are a testament to the upbringing they received from their parents.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
You should never take responsibility for more children than you can give attention to.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they're born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.
RAY ROMANO
stand-up routine
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, Forbes, 1991
Children need models more than they need critics.
JOSEPH JOUBERT
Pensées
We know that the outcasts and misfits are the children most likely to become violent, so it only follows that we must pull them into the arms of love and/or acceptance, and find a place where they fit. If our system doesn't have a place where a child fits, there's something wrong with the system, not the child.
WILLIAM G. DEFOORE
Anger
A strange mixture of fear and joy comes with driving off from the hospital with your firstborn in the vehicle. There's a powerful sense of transition and new beginning, and yet fear as well. It's a fear closely attached to the question, "What do I do with this thing?" It's a healthy fear born out of an awareness of the fragility of new life.
CHRIS SEIDMAN
Little Buddy
Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Oh, kids are great! You can teach them to hate what you hate!
HOMER SIMPSON
The Simpsons
What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
HONORE DE BALZAC
A Woman of Thirty
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.
G.K. CHESTERTON
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
Living with kids is like living in a frat house ... everything's broken, nobody sleeps, and there's alot of throwing up.
RAY ROMANO
stand-up routine
Keep thou an open door between thy child's life and thine own.
MAUD LINDSAY
"The Closing Door", Mother Stories
Raising children is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
A Good Enough Parent
Children see magic because they look for it.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
If we would amend the world, we should mend our selves; and teach our children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude