#children

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."

"Stunt dwarf or destroy the imagination of a child and you have taken away its chances of success in life. Imagination transforms the commonplace into the great and creates the new out of the old."

"A young child is a leader to an elderly person once his purpose has a faithful, sincere and trustworthy influence on people. Leadership is not restricted to position and age; it is self-made and influencial. Everyone has this self-leadership quality."

"The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best"

"And as I watched him, I knew that in every dark night there was, somewhere, a small light burning that could never be quenched."

"Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing."

"Wisdom is justified by all her children.Luke 7:35"

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you."

"You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination."

"You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.IT'S EDUCATIONAL.'What if she cuts herself?'THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON."

"Children are like sponges; they start to smell after a little while."

"As a child abuse and neglect therapist I do battle daily with Christians enamored of the Old Testament phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child."No matter how far I stretch my imagination, it does not stretch far enough to include the image of a cool dude like Jesus taking a rod to a kid."

"A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy."

"One! two! and through and throughThe vorpal blade went snickersnack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back."

"A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to the threat of our superior force is good for the child's character. It is never good for anyone's character."

"I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's."

"Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most"of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources?"

"I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child."

"We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there."

"I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves."