“If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof...,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!”
Source: The Little Prince
“Reading every day with children can't guarantee perfect outcomes for any family—not in grades, not in happiness, not in relationships. But it is as close to a miracle product as we can buy, and it doesn't cost a nickel. As a flawed, fallible person with an imperfect temper, I know that reading every night is not just the nicest thing I've done with my children but represents, without question, the best I have been able to give them as their mother.”
Source: The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction – A Neuroscience Guide for Parents on Brain Development and Family Bonds
“Crying over their children’s hearts is what mothers do.”
Source: The Blood Spell
“Hope is the food of the foolish. Eat up, kiddos.”
Source: Once & Future
“Children need love the most when they deserve it the least.”
“Many parents love their children. Yet they make them suffer a lot in the name of love. They’re often not capable of understanding their children’s suffering, difficulties, hopes, and aspirations. We have to ask ourselves, “Am I really loving the other person by understanding them or am I just projecting my own needs?”
Source: Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
“Children do not only have an innate hope; they are hope. And more than that: they are our future. As Kahlil Gibran writes, they are like "living arrows sent forth" into infinity, and their souls "dwell in the house of tomorrow..." They carry their hope with them to a future we can't see.
Children come to us fresh from the divine source, from what I call "Mama," from life itself, and they lead us to the same: to the God-force within creation. That is why none of us - no matter our race, creed, religion, or politics - can look at a child and not feel joy. We look at them, and something thrills us to the depth of our hearts. They are living miracles, and when we see them we know that there is a God, that life itself is a miracle. Children show us, with their innocence and clarity, the very face of God in human form.”
Source: Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience
“We’ve never been a close family, so I’ve never been able to see him as much more than an absent provider who’s going through the motions for the sake of his family.”
“It’s not easy,” Jende said, shaking his head as he turned onto Elm Street, where the dentist’s office was located.
“Who is it not easy for?”
“For you, for your father, for every child, every parent, for everybody. It’s just not easy, this life here in this world.”
Source: Behold the Dreamers
“All is not lost, of course. There is still time if we judge teachers, students, and parents, hold them accountable on the same scale, if we truly test teachers, students, and parents, if we make everyone responsible for quality, if we insure that by the end of its sixth year every child in every country can live in libraries to learn almost by osmosis, then our drug, street-gang, rape, and murder scores will suffer themselves near zero. But the Fire Chief, in mid-novel, says it all, predicting the one-minute TV commercial with three images per second and no respite from the bombardment. Listen to him, know what he says, then go sit with your child, open a book, and turn the page.”
Source: Fahrenheit 451
“For children parents are always a burden. But parents who draw too much attention to themselves are intolerable.”
Source: La frantumaglia