My lovely living boy,
My hope, my hap, my love, my life, my joy.
Children Quotes
A short page with no flagged entries, which is rare. Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Suman Pokhrel, Alice Meynell and Isaiah lead. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads (1798) asks what a simple child that lightly draws its breath and feels its life in every limb should know of death. Goldsmith’s The Traveller (1764) says the sports of children satisfy the child. Byron, in Beppo (1818), complains about them with the line that they always smell of bread and butter.
The sourced entries here are all poems, and every quote page shows the poem’s source and date.
The welfare of a child is not to be measured by money only, nor by physical comfort only.
Few sons attain the praise of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace.
A little curly-headed, good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth.
By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child.
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.