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Quote by Don Marquis

“If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.”

Quote by Don Marquis

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Don Marquis
Don Marquis

Don Marquis, an American humorist, was born on July 29, 1878, and died on December 29, 1937. He is known for his witty short stories and column articles, with his most famous work being the 'Archy and Mehitabel' series. more

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Book:Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass
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“Soeur Marie Emelie" Soeur Marie Emelie is little and very old: her eyes are onyx, and her cheeks vermilion, her apron wide and kind and cobalt blue. She comforts generations and generations of children, who are "new" at the convent school. When they are eight, they are already up to her shoulder, they grow up and go into the world, she remains, forever, always incredibly old, but incredibly never older... She has an affinity with the hens, When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries, she is the only grown-up, whose tears are not frightening tears. Children can weep without shame, at her side... Soeur Marie Emelie... her apron as wide and kind as skies on a summer day and as clean and blue.”

ChildrenComfortingCatholic Author
Book:Flowering Tree
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“I mention this because there is the question of how children become aware of what the world is, and how to act in it. How, for example, do you learn that it is impolite to ask a couple why they have no children? How do you set a table? How do you know if you are chewing with your mouth open if no one has ever told you? How do you even know what you look like if the only mirror in the house is a tiny one high above the kitchen sink, or if you have never heard a living soul say that you are pretty, but rather, as your breasts develop, are told by your mother that you are starting to look like one of the cows in the Pedersons’ barn?”

Children
Book:My Name Is Lucy Barton
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“Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

ChildrenFairy Tales
Author:C.S. Lewis
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“Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.”

MenChildrenSexWomenSocietyEqualityLife ExperienceCivilisationLord Of The FliesMicrocosms
Author:William Golding
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