Selected childhood quotes

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

2. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

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

4. 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.

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

6. 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.

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

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

9. Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.

15. It began probably when I was about five years old, putting on my mother's lipstick.

16. I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there.

17. 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.

18. 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.

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

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

21. 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.

22. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

29. 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.

30. 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.

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

32. 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.

33. Childhood is a short season.

34. One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it.

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

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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?

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

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

41. Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn't eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower.

42. Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life!!

43. 'I've been fascinated by music for as long as I can remember. I was the kid on the playground in the third grade who would tell other kids about Paul Simon or Depeche Mode.'

44. Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.

45. Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious - and what is too often overlooked - is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

46. We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.

47. I often went to bed without supper 'cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.

48. One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

49. Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today.

50. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

51. 'Disneyland is Vegas for children.'

52. 'I was the only boy in our school what had asthma,' said the fat boy with a touch of pride. 'And I've been wearing specs since I was three.'

53. 'This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grown-ups come to fetch us we'll have fun.'

54. Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: 'You just change your attitude now please, young man.' This transformation in kids - from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream - is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

55. Sweet childish days, that were as long As twenty days are now.

56. - A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

57. Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

58. I remember, I remember How my childhood fleeted by,- The mirth of its December And the warmth of its July.

59. Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

60. Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.

61. In the third grade a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged.

62. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

63. When you say to a child 'Bedtime, it's bedtime now' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Go and lie down in the dark... for hours... and don't move. I'm locking the door now'

64. A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with the outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

65. Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication.

66. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. (p 1)

67. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.

68. My grandmother would shanghai pilots at the Havana airport so they'd bring me cartons of mango baby food -- the only kind I'd eat. I learned to eat peach later. And in every carton, she'd slip in a Cuban record.

69. Children don't read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology... They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff... When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.

70. I stole a lot when I was a kid, but I wouldn't steal one candy; I'd take the whole carton. I also used to like to break into other people's houses and sit in their rooms. I found it very comforting to be in someone's empty house.

71. I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theatre. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth.

72. I knew I was unwanted when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and radio.

73. No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't.

74. I wanted my wild things to be frightening. But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child. They came almost every Sunday, and there was my week-long anxiety about their coming the next Sunday... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like 'You're so cute I could eat you up.' And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would.

75. It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.

76. All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

77. If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. He will push his helmet slightly to one side, scratch his head thoughtfully, and then he will point his huge white-gloved finger and say: 'First to your right, second to your left, sharp right again, and you're there. Good-morning.' And sure enough, if you follow his directions exactly, you will be there - right in the middle of Cherry-Tree Lane, where the houses run down one side and the Park runs down the other and the cherry-trees go dancing right down the middle. If you are looking for Number Seventeen - and it is more than likely that you will be, for this book is all about that particular house - you will very soon find it.

78. Before seeing Truffaut's Small Change, I was afraid it was going to be one of those simple, natural films about childhood which I generally try to avoid - I'm just not good enough to go to them. But this series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity - a poetic comedy that's really funny.

79. They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.

80. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

81. The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by. We insist upon forced mental feeding and our lessons become a form of torture. This is one of man's most cruel and wasteful mistakes.

82. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

83. I want kids, a family of my own. I'd like to give them the first eight years of their lives in the country. Then I'd want them educated, which I wasn't formally, although I had a tutor once when I was twelve. At times I miss a formal education, but at others I thank God for everything else I have now. What I have got from my childhood aren't toys, but memories. And happy memories are better than any toy.

84. The Schoolboy, with his satchel in his hand, Whistling aloud to bear his courage up.

85. Here a little child I stand Heaving up my either hand. Cold as paddocks though they be, Here I lift them up to Thee, For a benison to fall On our meat, and on us all.

86. I was such an ugly kid- when I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.

87. Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children-honoured as the jewellery of God only by them-when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.

88. The American child is a highly intelligent human being - characteristically sensitive, humorous, open-minded, eager to learn, and has a strong sense of excitement, energy, and healthy curiosity about the world in which he lives. Lucky indeed is the grown-up who manages to carry these same characteristics into adult life. It usually makes for a happy and successful individual.

89. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. I won't do that. I'll temper a story, yes. But I won't play down, and I won't patronize.

90. Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

91. As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.

92. My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

93. I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

94. There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end

95. I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.

96. I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

97. A dark unfathom'd tide Of interminable pride - A mystery, and a dream, Should my early life seem.

98. Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers- And that cannot stop their tears.

99. Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill! Mighty glad I ain't a girl-ruther be a boy, Without them sashes, curls, an' things that 's worn by Fauntleroy! Love to chawnk green apples an' go swimmin' in the lake- Hate to take the castor-ile they give for bellyache! 'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me, But jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be!

100. Oh, call my brother back to me! I cannot play alone: The summer comes with flower and bee,- Where is my brother gone?