C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Childhood
The child is father of the man.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
A child is an angel dependent on man.
Children are the to-morrow of society.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
Childhood, whose very happiness is love.
In bringing up a child, think of its old age.
As each one wishes his children to be so they are.
Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked of children.
Let nothing foul to either eye or ear reach those doors within which dwells a boy.
The dutifulness of children is the foundation of all virtues.
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Every child walks into existence through the golden gate of love.
The training of children is a profession where we must know to lose time in order to gain it.
Parents deserve reproof when they refuse to benefit their children by severe discipline.
It is better to keep children to their duty by a sense of honor and by kindness than by fear.
To a mother, a child is everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of her existence.
Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present.
Happy child! the cradle is still to thee a vast space; but when thou art a man the boundless world will be too small for thee.
We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.
“Beware,” said Lavater, “of him who hates the laugh of a child.” “I love God and little children,” was the simple yet sublime sentiment of Richter.
I do not like punishments. You will never torture a child into duty; but a sensible child will dread the frown of a judicious mother more than all the rods, dark rooms, and scolding school-mistresses in the universe.
That season of childhood, when the soul, on the rainbow bridge of fancy, glides along, dry-shod, over the walls and ditches of this lower earth.
No man can tell but he that loves his children how many delicious assents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges.
A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or two of the eldest restricted, and the youngest ruined by indulgence; but in the midst, some that are, as it were, forgotten, who many times, nevertheless, prove the best.
A creature undefiled by the taint of the world, unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward growth it shall be no other!
If a boy is not trained to endure and to bear trouble, he will grow up a girl; and a boy that is a girl has all a girl’s weakness without any of her regal qualities. A woman made out of a woman is God’s noblest work; a woman made out of a man is His meanest.
An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong.
When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance for his offense, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one’s own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom.
A child’s eyes, those clear wells of undefiled thought—what on earth can be more beautiful? Full of hope, love and curiosity, they meet your own. In prayer, how earnest; in joy, how sparkling; in sympathy, how tender! The man who never tried the companionship of a little child has carelessly passed by one of the great pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower without plucking it or knowing its value.
Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, “Them that were entering in ye hindered,” and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man’s whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation.
The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important, and of a long duration. It is with these first impressions, as with a river whose waters we can easily turn, by different canals, in quite opposite courses, so that from the insensible direction the stream receives at its source, it takes different directions, and at last arrives at places far distant from each other; and with the same facility we may, I think, turn the minds of children to what direction we please.