"I like my boy with his endless..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies and iterations and his utter inability to conceive why I should not leave all my nonsense, business, and writing and come to tie up his toy horse, as if there was or could be any end to nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not love you."
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is no one who does not exaggerate!”
“What art can paint or gild any object in after life with the glow which nature gives to the first baubles of childhood? St. Peter's cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed.”
“Rude poets of the tavern hearth,squandering your unquoted mirth,which keeps the ground, and never soars,while jake retorts, and reuben roars;tough and screaming, as birch-bark,goes like bullet to its mark;while the solid curse and jeernever balk the waiting ear.”
More on Children
“Children are all foreigners.”
“But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.”
“It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.”
More on Parenting
“I was the world's ugliest baby. I have photos of my folks leaving the hospital with sacks over their heads... I asked my mother how to turn off the electric fan. She said 'Grab the blade!”
“Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately people shape their own characters.”
“I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.”