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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Childhood

The child is father of the man.

Wordsworth.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

Wordsworth.

A child is an angel dependent on man.

Count de Maistre.

Children are the to-morrow of society.

Whately.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

Rousseau.

Childhood, whose very happiness is love.

L. E. L. Erinna.

In bringing up a child, think of its old age.

Joubert.

As each one wishes his children to be so they are.

Terence.

  • The childhood shows the man
  • As morning shows the day.
  • Milton.

    Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked of children.

    R. H. Dana.

    Let nothing foul to either eye or ear reach those doors within which dwells a boy.

    Juvenal.

    The dutifulness of children is the foundation of all virtues.

    Cicero.

  • Who can foretell for what high cause
  • This darling of the gods was born?
  • Andrew Marvell.

    Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

    George Eliot.

    Children have more need of models than of critics.

    Joubert.

    Every child walks into existence through the golden gate of love.

    Beecher.

    The training of children is a profession where we must know to lose time in order to gain it.

    Rousseau.

    Parents deserve reproof when they refuse to benefit their children by severe discipline.

    Petronius Arbiter.

  • But still I dream that somewhere there must be
  • The spirit of a child that waits for me.
  • Bayard Taylor.

    It is better to keep children to their duty by a sense of honor and by kindness than by fear.

    Terence.

    To a mother, a child is everything; but to a child, a parent is only a link in the chain of her existence.

    Lord Beaconsfield.

    Children have neither past nor future; and that which seldom happens to us, they rejoice in the present.

    La Bruyère.

  • Man to the last is but a froward child;
  • So eager for the future, come what may,
  • And to the present so insensible.
  • Rogers.

  • Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering
  • And innocent.
  • Byron.

    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.

    Schiller.

  • Children are the keys of Paradise;
  • They alone are good and wise,
  • Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer.
  • R. H. Stoddard.

    We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

    Goethe.

    I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.

    Dickens.

    Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter; they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.

    Bacon.

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

  • Oh, for boyhood’s time of June,
  • Crowding years in one brief moon,
  • When all things I heard or saw,
  • Me, their master, waited for.
  • Whittier.

  • Alas! regardless of their doom,
  • The little victims play;
  • No sense have they of ills to come,
  • Nor care beyond to-day.
  • Gray.

  • Oh, would I were a boy again,
  • When life seemed formed of sunny years,
  • And all the heart then knew of pain
  • Was wept away in transient tears!
  • Mark Lemon.

  • The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows
  • Is like the dewdrop on the rose,
  • When next the summer breeze comes by
  • And waves the bush, the flower is dry.
  • Scott.

    “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.

    Mrs. Sigourney.

  • While here at home, in shining day,
  • We round the sunny garden play,
  • Each little Indian sleepy-head
  • Is being kissed and put to bed.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson.

  • In winter I get up at night
  • And dress by yellow candle-light.
  • In summer, quite the other way,
  • I have to go to bed by day.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson.

  • If there is anything that will endure
  • The eye of God, because it still is pure,
  • It is the spirit of a little child,
  • Fresh from His hand, and therefore undefiled.
  • R. H. Stoddard.

    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.

    H. K. White.

    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.

    Richter.

    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.

    Jeremy Taylor.

  • Ah! what would the world be to us
  • If the children were no more?
  • We should dread the desert behind us
  • Worse than the dark before.
  • Longfellow.

    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.

    Bacon.

  • But still when the mists of doubt prevail,
  • And we lie becalmed by the shores of age,
  • We hear from the misty troubled shore
  • The voice of the children gone before,
  • Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
  • Bret Harte.

  • Ay, these young things lie safe in our hearts just so long
  • As their wings are in growing; and when these are strong
  • They break it, and farewell! the bird flies!
  • Lord Lytton.

  • Oh, when I was a tiny boy
  • My days and nights were full of joy.
  • My mates were blithe and kind!
  • No wonder that I sometimes sigh
  • And dash the teardrop from my eye
  • To cast a look behind!
  • Hood.

  • Pointing to such, well might Cornelia say,
  • When the rich casket shone in bright array,
  • “These are my Jewels!” Well of such as he,
  • When Jesus spake, well might the language be,
  • “Suffer these little ones to come to me!”
  • Samuel Rogers.

    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!

    Douglas Jerrold.

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

  • Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
  • In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
  • Who shall become a master of the art,
  • An admiral sailing the high seas of thought
  • Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
  • For lands not yet laid down in any chart.
  • Longfellow.

    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.

    Beecher.

    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.

    Henry Home.

  • When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
  • And the school for the day is dismissed,
  • The little ones gather around me,
  • To bid me good night and be kissed;
  • Oh, the little white arms that encircle
  • My neck in their tender embrace;
  • Oh, the smiles that are halos of heaven,
  • Shedding sunshine of love on my face.
  • Charles M. Dickinson.

    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.

    Horace Mann.

    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.

    Mrs. Norton.

  • Children, ay, forsooth
  • They bring their own love with them when they come,
  • But if they come not there is peace and rest;
  • The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more;
  • Why, the world’s full of them, and so is heaven—
  • They are not rare.
  • Jean Ingelow.

  • A truthful page is childhood’s lovely face,
  • Whereon sweet Innocence has record made—
  • An outward semblance of the young heart’s grace,
  • Where truth, and love, and trust are all portrayed.
  • Shillaber.

  • Behold, my lords,
  • Although the print be little, the whole matter
  • And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip,
  • The trick of ’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,
  • The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;
  • The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.
  • Shakespeare.

  • You hear that boy laughing? You thing he’s all fun;
  • But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done.
  • The children laugh loud, as they troop to his call,
  • And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
  • O. W. Holmes.

    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.

    Maltbie Babcock.

  • They are idols of hearts and of households;
  • They are angels of God in disguise;
  • His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses;
  • His glory still gleams in their eyes.
  • Oh, those truants from home and from heaven,
  • They have made me more manly and mild,
  • And I know now how Jesus could liken
  • The kingdom of God to a child.
  • Dickens.

    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.

    Locke.