Best adults & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.”

Ifs Children Kids Together Joy Order Belief Fun Nature Share Adults Perfection Good Things Defeat Chores

Book:Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Source: Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

“Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”

Source: Walt Disney: Conversations

“I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head.”

Ifs Mean Littles Said Language Trouble Listening Adults Ears They Said Really Mean Drains

Book:The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: A Novel

Source: The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet: A Novel

“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

Ifs Self Might Walks Imagine Baby Adults Criticism Tendencies Infant Screwed Up Self Criticism Stomping

Book:Body Mind Mastery: Training for Sport and Life

Source: Body Mind Mastery: Training for Sport and Life

“Sometimes I think high school is one long hazy activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it.”

Ifs Thinking Long Sometimes Enough School Activity High School Adults Tough Worth It Hazy

Author:Laurie Halse Anderson

“...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.”

Ifs Way Should School Certain Wish Parent Growing Up Growing Expectations Adults

Author:Chris Crutcher

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Kids across the country have grown up accepting the idea that no one can harm your family if at least one of its adult members is in the shower. No one knows why.”

Ifs Knows Ideas Country Kids Accepting Members Adults Harm Showers

Book:I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Source: I Was Told There'd Be Cake

“I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.”

Ifs Knows Want Done Wanted Happened Adults What You Want Statements Weather Do You Know Boast Quaint Girlhood Brash

Book:I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

Source: I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories

“Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?”

People Ifs Children Different Seems Lines Crime Adults Crowds Following Hey Bridges Conformity Jumping Jumping Off Following The Crowd Jumping Off A Bridge

Book:A Fraction of the Whole

Source: A Fraction of the Whole

“After a childhood of hungering to be an adult, my hunger had passed. Unexpected fates had begun to catch my notice. These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep.”

Ifs Sleep Fate Childhood Middle Walking Adults Tired Hunger Unexpected Replaced Middle Aged

Book:A Gate at the Stairs

Source: A Gate at the Stairs

“Yeah, and by the way? How much does it suck that I'm an adult if I kill somebody, and not if I want a beer?”

Ifs Way Want Doe Adults Yeah Beer

Book:Glass Houses: The Morganville Vampires

Source: Glass Houses: The Morganville Vampires

“I'm not usually an eavesdropper,but i dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.”

Ifs Trying Talking Listening Adults Dare Your Best Friend

Book:The lightning thief

Source: The lightning thief

“Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up”

Ifs Thinking Want Grows Stuff Christ Growing Up Adults

Book:It

Source: It

“Even if there was such a thing as a half-price sale at the local Ming outlet shop, she would have to work ten lifetimes to make up such a sum. Always supposing that it wasn't one of a kind. Panic was no longer merely rearing. It was thundering through her at full throttle. There was only one thing to be done, she realized. The mature, responsible, adult thing to do. Hide the evidence.”

Ifs Kind Done Half One Thing Ten Evidence Adults Responsible Lifetime Locals Things To Do Shops Mature Panic Outlets Supposing One Of A Kind Supposing That Throttle

Author:Alexandra Ivy

“There’s something about seeing an adult you knew in childhood that makes them marginally vulnerable to you, and vice versa. There’s also something comforting in thinking that if they made it this far, relatively unscathed, then maybe you didn’t turn out half bad either.”

Ifs Thinking Made Turns Half Seeing Childhood Adults Vices Vulnerable Made It Comforting Vice Versa

Author:Vicki Pettersson

“They [the Hardscrabbles]never enjoyed it when adults playfully lied to them. The adults always think they're being amusing and imaginative, just like children. But kids never lie playfully. They lie as if their lives depended on it.”

Ifs Thinking Children Kids Lying Adults Enjoyed Imaginative Lied Amusing Never Lie

Book:The Kneebone Boy

Source: The Kneebone Boy

“So you go away from where you were afraid. Some stay; some go; it's a big difference, leaving the humiliations of childhood, the morbid fear. We didn't have much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can't tell the adults that; they don't care. They make children into dead things like they are. If there's something left alive in you, you run. You run from the poor little child on her knees; fear burned the skin off all right; she's still on her knees, dead and raw and tender.”

Ifs Children Littles Stills Bigs Care Running Left Differences Poor Alive Childhood Adults Skins Leaving Don't Care Knees Going Away Burned Humiliation Morbid

Author:Andrea Dworkin

“Do you know what separates adults from children? Self-discipline. We don’t want to go to work, we don’t want to do our chores, and we don’t want to make unpleasant decisions, but we do all those things because we’re aware of the consequences which will follow if we don’t.”

Ifs Knows Want Children Self Decision Discipline Adults Consequence Do You Know Self Discipline Chores

Author:Ilona Andrews

“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

Ifs Children Long Feelings Lasts Waiting Decision Love Is Seeing Adults Commitment Children Love Wavering

Book:Pathfinder

Source: Pathfinder

“He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.”

Ifs Way Years Young Felt Waiting Five Adults Illness Conviction Mental Illness Insane Drunk Hated Five Years Hallucinations

Book:For The Win

Source: For The Win

“The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL——IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate——it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me.”

Source: American Psycho: Picador Classic

“it's weird how much people change. for example, when i was a kid i loved all of these things..and over time all of them just fell away, one after another, replaced by friends and IMing and cell phones and boys and clothes. it's kind of sad, if you think about it. like there's no continuity in people at all. like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you're no longer a kid but a "young adult," and after that you're a totally different person. maybe even a less happy person. maybe even a worse one.”

“Sometimes being an adult means doing the right thing, even if it's not what you want.”

Ifs Want Mean Sometimes Adults What You Want Right Thing Doing The Right Thing

Book:Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

Ifs Thinking Kind Mean Enough Choices Pay Attention Exercise Conscious Adults Pay Attention Constructs Really Mean

Author:David Foster Wallace

“His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?" But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.”

Ifs Way Mind Lying Asks Father Answers Knowing Adults Empowered Unimaginable Rudeness

Book:The Giver Movie Tie-In Edition

Source: The Giver Movie Tie-In Edition

“I always say to myself that if I can make a movie that makes a kid smile or gives them some hope or something to get excited about, then I'm applying myself in the best way that I can. I don't think that just goes for kids. I think that it goes for adults, as well, and for families.”

Ifs Thinking Way Giving Wells I Can Kids Adults Excited Best Way

Author:Nicolas Cage

“You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 X 10^18 joules of potential energy—enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”

Ifs Feels May Enough Energy Force Adults Assuming Average Thirty Bombs Modest Robust Hydrogen Hydrogen Bomb Potential Energy

Author:Bill Bryson

“I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?”

Ifs Years Looks Mean Book Would Be Jobs Lasts Courses Reading Stuff Adults Busy Average Teenager Last Year Miami Csi Csi Miami

Author:John Green

“There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.”

“Jessica stopped beside him, said: 'What delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.' He spoke mechanically: 'If only adults could relax like that.' 'Yes.' 'Where do we lose it?' he murmured. 'We do, indeed, lose something,' she said.”

Ifs Children Said Loses Sleep Adults Relax Abandon Spokes Delicious Jessica

Author:Frank Herbert

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

Ifs Trying Believe Humans Happens Difficult Brain Watches Adults Don't Believe Revolutionary Literacy Human Brain Illiterate Learning To Read

Book:America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

Source: America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

“Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapult you into heaven would seem transparent to a god, any god,for if ones heart is not in allignment with the creator of that heaven, then... what is the point?”

Ifs Knows Heart Seems Heaven Cases Demand Adults Creator Punishment Bitter Behave Latter Transparent Catapults Bitter Experience

Author:R. A. Salvatore

“Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.”

Ifs Knows Way Kind Has Beens Matter Facts Use Problem Today Too Much Dog Mines Approach Adults Train Sticks Population Educated Lifts Select Matter Of Fact

Author:Lee Kuan Yew

“You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children. All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for schooling - how do we know what's in those bars? And don't even get me stated on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale. Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.”

“If a child smiles, if an adult smiles, that is very important. If in our daily lives we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.”

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.”

Ifs Children Doe Book Enough Interest Adults Good Enough Not Good Enough Grownups

Book:A Circle of Quiet

Source: A Circle of Quiet

“Many people feel that mass acceptance and smooth socialization are desirable life paths for a young adult… Many people are often wrong… Don’t bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public’s regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.”

“The kakapo is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.”

Ifs Thinking Sometimes Seems Running Bits Tree Land Six Bird Adults Wings Seven Forgotten Flying Fats Worried Pounds Bricks Seven Pounds

Author:Douglas Adams

“the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the “nursery,” as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.”

Ifs World Want Mind Children Play Stories Rooms Modern Adults Accidents Fairy Association Old Fashioned Furniture Nursery Shabby Misused Fairy Stories

Book:Tales from the Perilous Realm

Source: Tales from the Perilous Realm

“Education is identical with helping the child realize his potentialities. The opposite of education is manipulation, which is based on the absence of faith in the growth of potentialities and the connection that a child will be right only if the adults put into him what is desirable and suppress what seems to be undesirable.”

Ifs Children Helping Seems Growth Realizing Adults Connections Opposites Absence Manipulation Desirable Identical Undesirable

Author:Erich Fromm

“If children could, if adults knew.”

Ifs Children Adults

Author:Sigmund Freud

“Adults weren’t supposed to understand their children and you were doing something wrong if they did.”

Ifs Children Adults

Book:The Atria Summer 2013 Beach-Read Bag: A Free Collection of Excerpts from Some of Our Favorite Writers

Source: The Atria Summer 2013 Beach-Read Bag: A Free Collection of Excerpts from Some of Our Favorite Writers

“What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or biased history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact. With this creeps in the tacit assumption that other nations have not equally their heroes; perhaps even the belief - surely it is very bad biology - that we can literally 'inherit' tradition.”

Ifs Long Doe Book Facts Seems Lasts Young Belief Nations Serious Type Hero Adults Tradition Educated Assumption Biology Legends Heroic Creeps Indoctrination Biased Poisonous Pernicious Tacit

Author:C. S. Lewis

“It is good to be taught humility when we are young. If we do not exeperience pain as children, we will cause pain as adults.”

Ifs Children Pain Young Causes Humility Taught Adults

Author:Darren Shan

“The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not crawl, once”

People Ifs Thinking Trying Firsts Today Past Fall Walks Baby Walking Adults First Time Fall Back Crawling Buttocks

Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“If they were real, then maybe the world was big enough to have magic in it. And if there was magic — even bad magic, and Zach knew it was more likely that there was bad magic than any good kind — then maybe not everyone had to have a story like his father's, a story like the kind all the adults he knew told, one about giving up and growing bitter.”

Ifs World Giving Kind Real Enough Stories Bigs Father Growing Magic Giving Up Adults Bitter

Book:Doll Bones

Source: Doll Bones

“I knew enough about adults to know that if did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway.”

Ifs Knows Believe Enough Happened Adults Believe In Me

Author:Neil Gaiman

“The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.If you take nothing else from what I've been through, at least remember this: make your choices well. Because you'll always be accountable for them. That's what being an adult is all about.”

Ifs Wells Matter Remember Choices Mistake Forever Shapes Adults

Book:The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

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