The best quotes about Children & Childhood

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.

Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

We are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to preaching.

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don't rush into adulthood, it isn't all that much fun.

For years I have been mourning and not for my dead, it is for this boy for whatever corner in my heart died when his childhood slid out of my arms.

The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart.

The depth of the love of parents for their children cannot be measured. It is like no other relationship. It exceeds concern for life itself. The love of a parent for a child is continuous and transcends heartbreak and disappointment.

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy!

The soul is healed by being with children.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

I think my mom put it best. She said, 'Little girls soften their daddy's hearts.'

Do you remember in kindergarten how you'd meet a kid and know nothing about them, then 10 seconds later you're playing like you're best friends, because you didn't have to be anything but yourself? Singing with you felt like that.

An adult scientist is a kid who never grew up.

A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.

All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

A baby was like a revolution, Grigori thought: you could start one, but you could not control how it would turn out.

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

I'd give all the wealth that years have piled,
the slow result of life's decay,
To be once more a little child
for one bright summer day.

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms, when his hands are empty.

Anything I've done up till May 27th 1999 was kind of an illusion, existing without living. My daughter, the birth of my daughter, gave me life.

Children have got to be free to lead their own lives.

Disneyland isn't designed just for children. When does a person stop being a child? Can you say that a child is ever entirely eliminated from an adult?

...when I was a kid and rode in cars I used to imagine I held a big scythe in my hand and cut down all the trees and posts and even sliced every hill that zoomed past the window.

Where'd the days go, when all we did was play?
And the stress that we were under wasn't stress at all
Just a run and a jump into a harmless fall

A child's voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who've forgotten how to listen.

He was waving. "Saukerl," she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a 'Saumensch'. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.

Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.

You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

We stopped checking for monsters under our bed, when we realized they were inside us.

Having a baby is like having a tattoo on your face. You kind of want to be committed.

To my dear beautiful daughter,

I'm writing you a letter. That's right, a good old-fashioned letter. It's a lost art, really. I have a confession to make. I didn't like you very much at first. You were just this annoying, little blob. You smelled nice. Most of the time. But you didn't seem to have much interest in me. Which I, of course, found vaguely insulting.

It was just you and your mom against the world... funny how some things never change. So I cruised along, doing my thing, acting the fool, not really understanding how being a parent changes you. And I don't remember the exact moment everything changed. I just know that it did.

One minute I was impenetrable. Nothing could touch me. The next, my heart was somehow beating outside my chest, exposed to the elements. Loving you has been the most profound, intense, painful experience of my life. In fact, it's been almost too much to bear. As your father, I made a silent vow to protect you from the world, never realizing I was the one who would end up hurting you the most.

When I flash forward, my heart breaks. Mostly because I can't imagine you speaking of me with any sort of pride. How could you? Your father is a child in a man's body. He cares for nothing and everything at the same time. Noble in thought, weak in action. Something has to change. Something has to give. It's getting dark... too dark to see.

I could use a dream or a genie or a wish
To go back to a place much simpler than this

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.

This life is so complicated, until we see it through the eyes of a child.

I'm not young enough to know everything.

The most efficient form of birth control I know is spending the day with my kids.

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.

I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. 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, and that is what our pictures attempt to do.

I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.

In the little world in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.