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Childhood Quotes

Browse 4994 quotes about Childhood.

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Childhood Quotes

“Children raised with love and compassion will be free to use their time as adults in meaningful and creative ways, rather than expressing their childhood hurts in ways that harm themselves or others. If adults have no need to deal with the past, they can live fully in the present.”

IfsWayNeedsChildrenUsePastHurtDealsCompassionCreativeChildhoodAdultsRaisedHarmMeaningfulLove And Compassion
Book:The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart
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“The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.”

ThinkingChildrenIdeasMightKidsPastParentGoneTakenLandChildhoodAdventureDegreesIncrediblesStrikesNeighborSignificantGravesKingdomsWildernessPortionsAdulthoodExile
Author:Michael Chabon
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“What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.”

GivingFirstsChildrenArtBookChildhoodObjectsRedGoldPaintPeterPossessedPicture BooksSt Peter
Book:The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude
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“Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation.”

KnowsMenChildrenLittlesWholeHelpingGrowsChristHoursWalksLordTeachMorningGrowing UpChildhoodArmsTerribleSalvationDareContactRuinsSavingDesertWarningEnteringSaviourOffendingIndictment
Author:Maltbie Davenport Babcock
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“Happy season of childhood! Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut With auroral radiance; and for thy nursling hast provided a soft swathing of love and infinite hope wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced round by sweetest dreams!”

MenKindChildrenArtDreamMotherPoorChildhoodSeasonsInfiniteRoundsSweetestPoor ManRadianceSlumberHutsInfinite Hope
Book:Sartor Resartus: The Historian
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“A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.”

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Author:Washington Irving
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“Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice.”

ChildrenHomeAgeTogetherYoungMotherGivenGrowsVoiceMemoriesGrowing UpGrowingShareChildhoodStyleDrawsPrejudiceChosenOld AgeComparisonCompanionEchoesChildhood MemoriesHousekeepingOlder SisterYoung MotherHomemaking
Author:Margaret Mead
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“Childhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become.”

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Author:Lillian Hellman
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“Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe.”

BelieveChildrenBigsAbleFacesBitsSleepChildhoodDogStonesWake UpLongingGlassesNostalgiaTreasureSugarDreadShellsGoing To SleepFear NotMorrowFear NothingMaple
Book:Ginger-Snaps
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“the myth of childhood happiness flourishes so wildly not because it satisfies the needs of children but because it satisfies the needs of adults. In a culture of alienated people, the belief that everyone has at least one good period in life free of care and drudgery dies hard. And obviously you can't expect it in your old age. So it must be you've already had it.”

PeopleNeedsChildrenHardCareAgeDiesCultureBeliefChildhoodPeriodsAdultsMythOld AgeBe YouDrudgery
Book:The dialectic of sex: the case for feminist revolution
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“Boredom!!! Shooting!!! Shelling!!! People being killed!!! Despair!!! Hunger!!! Misery!!! Fear!!! That's my life! The life of an innocent eleven-year-old schoolgirl!! A schoolgirl without a school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without the sun, without birds, without nature, without fruit, without chocolate or sweets, with just a little powdered milk. In short, a child without a childhood.”

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Book:Le journal de Zlata
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“You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.”

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Author:Joyce Carol Oates
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“Lordy, lordy, lordy do I love money. It is a character flaw, no doubt, one that springs from a panicked childhood in which I always felt as if our family was only a couple missed child support payments from being tossed onto the pitiless streets of our suburban New Jersey town.”

IfsChildrenCharacterFeltSupportDoubtStreetsChildhoodCoupleSpringTownsOur FamilyNo DoubtFlawsJerseyPaymentNew JerseyLove Of MoneyCharacter FlawsI Love Money
Author:Michael Ian Black
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“I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.”

KindChildrenCharacterHomeStuffResponsibilityCreativeHappenedChildhoodBehaviorAdultsStrategyBrilliantMy ChildrenDefectsPowerlessTaking ResponsibilityCopingShortcomingsBlamelessDefects Of Character
Author:Ashley Judd
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