"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself."
— George Bernard Shaw

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

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

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."
— Emilie Buchwald

"We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If we are worried about the future, then we must look today at the upbringing of children."
— Gordon B. Hinckley (Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes)

"So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state."
— Sylvia Plath

"All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story. "
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"You are always in my thoughts. When you were little, I knew your whereabouts at any given moment. Now that you are...off on your own, I still always know where you are, because I keep you in my heart."
— Elizabeth Berg

"I like children. If they're properly cooked."
— W.C. Fields

"Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things."
— Norman Douglas

"Every child needs a champion."
— Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself...
You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."
— Khalil Gibran

"When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911. "
— Erma Bombeck

"Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad."
— W.C. Fields

""You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time they go around—and why his parents will always wave back.”
"
— William D. Tammeus

"If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
"
— Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder)

"That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents."
— Ursula Hegi

"Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children don’t usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children."
— Julian Barnes

"If you're like most members of the Baby Boom generation, you decided somewhere along the line, probably after about four margaritas, to have children. This was inevitable. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income."
— Dave Barry

"The disgraced Usurer Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening... He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the oven, so that she wouldn't be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside... When he pulled her out to feed her or just hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint... Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)

"[Children] just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them, as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives."
— Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : A Novel)

"All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. "
— Erma Bombeck

"Our children are watching us
They put their trust in us
They're gonna be like us
It's ok for us to disagree
We can work it out lovingly
I hope"
— Dixie Chicks

"To Live is to die,To gain is to give,Sleeping is To Dream,Power is War
and Peace is to let Go of everything in the past before your time."
— Sammy Jackson

"A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease."
— Elizabeth Gaskell

"Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children's eyes."
— Lawana Blackwell

"What feeling is so nice as a child's hand in yours? So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp."
— Marjorie Holmes

"Think of the flowers before the dirt"
— Anna Pei

"Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.""
— Lillan Carter

"There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. "
— Anatole Broyard

"Wisdom is justified by all her children.
Luke 7:35"
— Various (Holy Bible)

"We never realized that so many children could go unseen- that so many beautiful faces could be invisible. "
— Invisible Children

"There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)

"You must feed them, Anne, else they eat their toys.
(Capt. Frederick Wentworth, None But You)"
— Susan Kaye

"Children are our greatest natural resource."
— Herbert Hoover

"Once, [Rabbi Chanoch] Teller was traveling with 16 of his [18] offspring ... while changing planes in Frankfurt, Teller noticed a German woman gaping.
'Are all of these your children?' the woman asked. 'From one wife?'
'Yes, God has blessed me with all these children,' the rabbi replied.
'Haven't you heard about the population problem?'the woman sniffed. 'How many more children do you want to have?'
Rabbi Teller paused and looked the woman in the eye: 'About 6 million,' he said."
— Lynn Vincent

"They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up."
— Zadie Smith (On Beauty)

"Children aren't everything. There are other things in the world, thought I admit some people don't seem to suspect it. "
— Nella Larsen (The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories)