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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.

Random quote on Children

Most quoted on children:

"Not a child: I call myself a boy,"
Says my king, with accent stern yet mild;
Now nine years have brought him change of joy—
"Not a child."

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The child is father of the man.

William Wordsworth

O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!

William Shakespeare King John (1598)

The wildest colts make the best horses.

Plutarch

Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long
Hearing wild birds' song.

William Blake

For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah The Book of Isaiah (-500)

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what is commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

Gene Wolfe The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Orbit 10 (1972)

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way. (p84)

Alice Hoffman Practical Magic (1995)

As in the Master's spirit you take into your arms the little ones, His own everlasting arms will encircle them and you. He will pity both their and your simplicity; and as in unseen presence He comes again, His blessing will breathe upon you.

James Hamilton

Johnny is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed as children are wont to do, and we are undressing to follow. And the more we put off the love of this present world, and all things superfluous beforehand, we shall have the less to do when we lie down.

Robert Leighton

Over at our place, we're sure of just one thing: everybody in the world was once a child. So in planning a new picture, we don't think of grown-ups, and we don't think of children, but just of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.

Walt Disney Recorded statement (1938)

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Paul of Tarsus

For he who has acquired the habit of lying or deceiving his father, will do the same with less remorse to others. I believe that it is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect, and by gentleness, than by fear.

Terence

I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads.

Jacques Lusseyran And There Was Light: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistance in World War II (1998)

A little child born yesterday
A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Look around you. Everywhere. They are there. In every home - lurking in dark corners … small, bi-pedal entities with almost human brains play their games in which adults are the pawns. They play and wait for the time when they will take over the world!

John Blair Moore

The children wear military uniforms and become used to handling the anti-aircraft artillery flak guns. Fifteen and sixteen-year-old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps the babies will also be employed. Total war!!

Friedrich Kellner My Opposition (1943)

Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip,
The trick of's frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.

William Shakespeare

Oh would I were a boy again,
When life seemed formed of sunny years,
And all the heart then knew of pain
Was wept away in transient tears!
When every tale Hope whispered then,
My fancy deemed was only truth.
Oh, would that I could know again,
The happy visions of my youth.

Mark Lemon

We wore a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair.
We sowed in youth a mustard seed;
We cut an almond rod.
We now are grown up to riper age:
Are they withered in the sod?

Charlotte Brontë

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