428 Childhood Quotes

Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

I watched them from the window, thy children at their play, And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away, And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child's own buoyant gladness Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness; And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago, Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip.

A baby is born into this world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness. He sees the world with eyes not used yet. As he grows up, his parents lay all this stuff on him. They tell him, when they should be letting him tell them. Let the children lead you.

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.

The scars left from the child's defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.

When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening, I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.

Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it.

Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams.

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

Toys are not a need people typically think of, but they've got all these kids who have absolutely nothing to do.

I spent my childhood alone, overweight and ugly, angry at everything, and knowing nothing of a life beyond this sadness.

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told.

Why were the little girls all frightened To be just what they are The boys were told to ask themselves How high how far The girls were told to reach the shelves While the boys were reaching stars That's why little girls were frightened To be just what they are.

I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

I wanted to be a visual artist because I grew up around a lot of painters and photographers and had a very artistic upbringing. And I fantasized about being a drug-dealer when I was a kid. I thought it would be a good opportunity; I knew that the market would be strong. Is that bizarre?

I was very much in my own world, never the popular kid. But I had a great family, a great brother and mother.

It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth.

(Discussing the first time he used acid) Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo and all my favourite cartoon heroes came to my room and ate cookies with me and sang songs for 16 hours. God damn!

Interviewer: How did you learn to sing? Davey: I did? I don't know, I've been singing since I was five years old at family functions. I used to visit my great grandparents at their house in PA, and my relatives would pay me to sing old 1920's songs into a wooden spoon. I was between the ages of 3-5 years old.

I didn't want to share my balloons...my mom wanted me to.

When I was real younger I had a hermit crab. I remember when I was real young I wanted a tarantula but my mom wouldn't let me have a tarantula. Cats. Most of my life I had cats. I had a venus fly trap once.

'I shall never forget that event - a boy was brutally killed by a Cossack with his sabre.'

She had got up behind the chaise and her cloak had been caught by the wheel and was jammed in and it hung there. She was crying after it. Poor thing. Mr. Graham took her into the chaise and the cloak was released from the wheel but the child's misery did not cease for her cloak was torn to rags; it had been a miserable cloak before, but she had no other and it was the greatest sorrow that could befal her. Her name was Alice Fell.

The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy: She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy.

Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me ... I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.

There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy...

I remember one day I was coming home from kindergarten I--well, I thought it was kindergarten, it turned out later I'd been working in a factory for two years... I was wondering 'cause it was always really hot and everyone was older than me, but, um, what did I know?

The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and put them there.

When I was a boy, I said, 'Daddy, take me to the zoo.' My father said, 'Son, when the zoo wants you, they'll come and get you'.

A little while ago, not much more than a few days ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it was was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning elucidated the earth. Now I live in a painful planet, transparent as ice; but it is as if I had learned everything at once in seconds.

Raising a child is not difficult, you just have to follow the steps. Step one: you take the kid, and you put him on the street corner, and you leave him there. Come back a week later, if the kid's still there [clicks tongue], you got yourself a stupid fucking kid. And then you proceed from that point.

Now I've got you, my cheerful twin! It's you or me, and I shall win! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

Till I had you I didn't know that I was missing out. Had to grow up and see the world through different shades of doubt. Give me one more chance to dream again. One more chance to feel again through your young heart. If only for one day let me try. I wanna see Christmas through your eyes. I want everything to be the way it used to be. Back to being a child again, thinking the world was mine . . . I see the rain, you see the rainbow hiding in the clouds. Never afraid to let your love show. Won't you show me how. Wanna learn how to believe again. Find the innocence in me again, through your young heart. Help me find a way, help me try. I wanna see Christmas through your eyes. I want everything to be the way it used to be. Back to being a child again, thinking the world was kind. I wanna see Christmas, Christmas through your eyes.

We spent all our time lighting candles in the churches and praying for father's safe return. But even then [1961 and 1962], as a little girl, I knew that he was really in prison and that God had nothing to do with it. Since then I have never had any belief in religion.

. . . My best friend [as a young girl] made this mole on my face, because she would get in a fight with me and scratch me -- by the third time the scab came off the [mole] was there . . .

[After the 1990 bus accident] I could not feel my legs, and I knew that I was paralysed. For me, this was a premonition of my worst fate proved right. When I was a child, I always ran up the stairs two at a time, and when I reached the top I would say to myself, one day I won't be able to do this because like my father I will lose the use of my body. Now I knew it had happened. For months afterwards I was locked back in myself, just as I had been when I was a child. But also part of my premonition had always been, strangely, that I would lose my body but in the end it would be all right.

I was the meanest kid on the block.

The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one's inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother's grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.

I know the first film I ever saw - it must have been some time in 1924, when I was six or so... was Black Beauty. About a stallion. I still recall a sequence with fire. It was burning, I remember that vividly. And I remember too how it excited me, and how afterwards we bought the book of Black Beauty and how I learned the chapter on the fire by heart - at that time I still hadn't learned to read.

I started to 'write' even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw - horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.

I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft... I'm laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd. I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, 'Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.' They see it for what it is... It is a fantasy world and they understand that completely.

(Imitating an old woman) Well when i was a child there was a carnival and we used to play this game called put the apple in the bucket, i was very good at this game, you brought your own apple and you gave the man a penny to put the apple in his bucket, and when the bucket was full he got in a van and fucked off.

'I used to annoy my brother when we were kids by pretending I had echolalia, which is a disease that causes people to repeat everything other people say. Smith: You're stupid. Me: You're stupid. Smith: Shut up! Me: Shut up! Smith: I'm a dumb uglyhead. Me: You're a dumb uglyhead.'

I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

From the time I was a baby, this [Jazz] was the music I liked.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky!

I never meet anyone nowadays who admits to having had a happy childhood. Everyone appears to think happiness betokens a lack of sensitivity.

The first time I discovered death...me and my mother and father, and my grandmother and grandfather, were driving through the desert at dawn. A truckload of Indians had either hit another car or something- there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. I was just a kid, so I had to stay in the car while my father and grandfather went to check it out. I didn't see nothing- all I saw was funny red paint and people lying around, but I knew something was happening, because I could dig the vibrations of the people around me, and all of a sudden I realized that they didn't know what was happening any more than I did. That was the first time I tasted fear...and I do think, at that moment, the souls of those dead Indians- maybe one or two of them-were just running around, freaking out, and just landed in my soul, and I was like a sponge, ready to sit there and absorb it.

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense.

The anxiety has been greatly increased by this government's multiplication of exams and emphasis on starting training as a middle manager in a computer company from the age of six.

A child laughs when it feels joy and cries when it feels pain. Both things, laughing and crying it does with its whole heart. We all became so tall and so clever. We know so much and we have read so much. But one thing we forgot: to laugh and cry like the children do.

Ooh, he's here again, The man with the child in his eyes.

They took the game right out of it. When I am a man I will be an astronaut, And find Peter Pan.

I hid my yo-yo In the garden. I can't hide you From the government. Oh, God, Daddy - I won't forget...

Many people found our house spooky, and the attic in fact as full of evil when I was born. It housed a collection of more than three hundred antique and modern firearms. Father had bought them during his and Mother's six-month honeymoon in Europe in 1922. Father thought them beautiful, but they might as well have been copperheads and rattlesnakes. They were murder.

I hadn't aimed at anything. If I had thought of the bullet's hitting anything, I don't remember now. I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit. The bullet was a symbol, and nobody was ever hurt by a symbol. It was a farewell to my childhood and a confirmation of my manhood. Why didn't I use a blank cartridge? What kind of a symbol would that have been?

Matthew Leiah Keller sat beneath a watershed tree and brooded. Other children played all around him, but they ignored Matt. So did two teachers on monitor duty. People usually ignored Matt when he wanted to be alone. Uncle Matt was gone. Gone to a fate so horrible that the adults wouldn't even talk about it.

In a room at the end of the garden to this house was a magnificent rocking-horse, which a friend had given my little boy; and Lord Byron, with a childish glee becoming a poet, would ride upon it. Ah! why did he ever ride his Pegasus to less advantage?

While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.

I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby.... I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me.

She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to let any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for - well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat - I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell - everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it.

I couldn't pronounce my last name until I was, like, 11.

I am terrified of mayonnaise. It was so bad when I was little that my friends would chase me around the house with a jar of mayonnaise and a knife.

With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt, passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street. Some saw him take the graveyard's zigzag mountain path, some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore, some visionaries saw him in the dead of night swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons, but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.

I thank God that this refreshing childhood vision still lives inside me in all its fullness of color and sound. This is what keeps my mind untouched by wastage, keeps it from withering and running dry. It is the sacred drop of immortal water which prevents me from dying. When I wish to speak of the sea, woman, or God in my writing, I gaze down in my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. He dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of the sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes.

The first Man is the first Spirit-seer; all appears to him as Spirit. What are children, but first men? The fresh gaze of the Child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable Seer.

Petra,' said Rackham, 'don't you understand that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't want any harm to you.

Such children. So young, so playful. I'm glad they can still be that way. Someday, when the real adult responsibilities settle on them, they'll lose that. It will be replaces by a slower, quieter kind of play. But for now, they can cast away care and remember how good it is to be alive.... That's what happiness means, isn't it?

Some memories don't fade, some physical memories are forever. The feel of your fathers hand, the sound of your mothers voice. Only, father's hand was smaller now. No, Ivan's was larger, but to him, it was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe.

Little kid dancin' in the grass, legs like rubber band. It's summertime, summertime. There's a line at the candy stand. Keep an eye on them children, eye on them children in the pool. You'd better keep an eye on them children, eye on them children in the pool.

Peter Sellers, a showbiz baby, was carried onstage two weeks into his life by vaudevillian Dickie Henderson, who encouraged the audience to join him in singing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.' Little Peter instantly burst into tears and the audience erupted into laughter and applause. From Pete's perspective, this emotional scenario was played out more or less consistently until his death in 1980.

I would sing in the mirror, holding a brush to my mouth like it was a microphone. The neighbors would always be complaining about how loud I was singing.

My mother didn't breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend.

My father never liked me, he'd tell me to go out and play 'Hide and-go-fuck-yourself'.

When I was a kid, I asked my Mother for a Bubble Bath, so she brought the water to a boil!