quotations about childhood
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Man
So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
JOHN GARDNER
Grendel
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
J.M. BARRIE
Peter Pan
Toyland, toy land
Little girl and boy land
While you dwell within it
You are ever happy there
Childhood's joy land
Mystic merry toy land
Once you pass its borders
You can ne'er return again
When you've grown up my dears
And are as old as I
You'll laugh and ponder on the years
That roll so swiftly by, my dears
That roll so swiftly by
DORIS DAY
"Toyland"
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE
A Circle of Quiet
In fairy tales it's always the children who have the fine adventures. The mothers have to stay at home and wait for the children to fly in the window.
AUDREY NIFFENEGGER
The Time Traveler's Wife
Childhood is supposed to be happy, and if you can't remember yours with any happiness, what hope have you later, when life starts handing you fresh grief?
AMITY GAIGE
Good Housekeeping, Feb. 2009
O how blessed it would be never to marry, or grow old; but to spend one's life innocently and indifferently among the trees and rivers which alone can keep one cool and childlike in the midst of the troubles of the world!
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn,", The Complete Short Fiction of Virginia Woolf
[Growing up] is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Crack-Up
It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.
L.R. KNOST
Two Thousand Kisses a Day
Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in afterlife the images first presented to it. The first thing continues forever with the child. The first joy, the first sorrow, the first success, the first failure, the first achievement, the first misadventure, paint the foreground of his life.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul.
IVAN DOIG
The Whistling Season
I'm sliding on the rainbows of my childhood dreams.
NELLY FURTADO
"Childhood Dreams"
I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.
ROALD DAHL
Matilda
These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.
PAT CONROY
The Prince of Tides
A rose gets its color and fragrance from the root, and man his virtue from his childhood.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Contemplating childhood is like contemplating a beautiful region as one rides backwards; one really becomes aware of the beauty at that moment, that very instant, when it begins to vanish.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
journal entry, July 30, 1838
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
Childhood is like a sunbeam over the clouded parts of existence, and often grows more vivid with the lapse of years. I have seen it in the chamber of mortal sickness, allaying the pang of anguish, by the magic of a fresh flower laid upon the pillow, by the song of the nesting bird, by the waving of the green branches at the open window; I have seen it mingling even with delirium, and the fever dream, soothing images of the cherished garden, the violet covered bank, the falling waters, or the favorite grove.
MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY
"On the Perception of the Beautiful", Connecticut Common School Journal, February 1, 1840