#Childhood Quotes

“Adult males are what their moms designed them.”

“Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.”

“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.”

“Infancy conforms to nobody;all conform to it.”

“How I hated schools, and what a life of anxiety I lived there. I counted the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home.”

“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 heart of the child.”

“The child realizes to every man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a defect in our education, or enables us to live over the unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to be almost personal experience.”

“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”

“In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet.”

“It was at "Little Lodge" I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced.”

“When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.”

“My mother made a brilliant impression upon my childhood life. She shone for me like the evening star.”

“I was on the whole considerably discouraged by my school days... It is not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the very beginning of the race.”

“...an old man is twice a child.”

“Children are all foreigners.”

“I lived a dream life (almost too exclusively, perhaps) when I was a lad and even now my thought goes back for refreshment to thosedays when all the world seemed to be a place of heroic adventure in which one's heart must keep its own counsel.”

“I didn't know much about golf growing up.”

“My mother always seemed to me like a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power. She shone for me like the evening star. I loved her dearly.”

“The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child.”

“My son, a perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sympathize with me; you can never know how much of me such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all.”

“Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it.”

“I see a schoolboy when I think of him,With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.”

“How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years.”

“I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.”

“Give to these children, new from the world,Rest far from men.Is anything better, anything better?Tell us it then.”

“Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“When I was young, my brother David and I were farmed off to foster homes, and I spent time in orphanages. My father abandoned us. Here's the most important person in my life, and I never met him.”

“My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.”

“There was a child went forth everyday, And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or dread, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day... or for many years or stretching cycles of years.”

“That great Cathedral space which was childhood.”

“Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as the way they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.”

“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . .”

“I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.”

“I knew at a young age, whether I was playing baseball or hockey or lacrosse, that my teammates were counting on me, whether it be to strike the last batter out in a baseball game or score a big goal in a hockey game.”

“When I was 5 and playing against 11-year-olds, who were bigger, stronger, faster, I just had to figure out a way to play with them.”

“I get a lot of parents coming up to me, telling me they are grooming their kids to be professional athletes. I'm really against that. I think it's a great life, and yeah, you can lead them in that direction. I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it, they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.”

“I have recall. I don't know why or how. I had a guy once who said he played against me in novice [league, for kids under nine], for the Detroit Lasers. And I said, "Oh yeah, we beat you in the tournament, 8-1 and I think I scored seven goals, and the goalie was left-handed." And he was, "Oh my God. I was the goalie!" .”

“Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.”

“As soon as a child has left the room his strewn toys become affecting.”

“There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.”

“No one can keep a secret better than a child.”

“Adults are only kids grown up”

“When I was a kid, a book I read advised young artist to be themselves. That decided it for me. I was a corny kind of guy, so I went in for corn.”

“Disneyland really began when my two daughters were very young. Saturday was always Daddy's Day and I would take them to the merry-go-round, and sit on a bench eating peanuts while they rode. And sitting there alone, I felt there should be something built, some kind of family park where parents and children could have fun together.”

“If you act like an adult when you're a kid you can afford to act like a kid the rest of your life.”

“That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up.”

“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,Out of the mocking bird's throat, the musical shuttle,. . . .A reminiscence sing.”

“When I was growing up, I didn't really know much about being popular or cliques or anything like that. In elementary school and middle school, you start to kind of realize what it's all about. There are cool kids, and then there's you, and you're just trying to figure out where you fit in.I learned a lot about acceptance and rejection,Those are the themes that you'll find spread throughout my music and weaved in throughout all of the lyrics. I really know what it's like to be accepted, and I also know what it's like to be rejected. And those are lessons I learned in Wyomissing.”

“Too many people grow up. 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 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.”

“A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children." from chapter VIII of Les Miserables”