quotations about childhood
Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS
The Name of the Wind
Childhoods never last. But everyone deserves one.
WENDY DALE
Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals
The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Regained
Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
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!
OWEN MEREDITH
Lucile
For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.
JOHN CONNOLLY
The Book of Lost Things
When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
Writing Magic
The story from childhood is like a flower pressed between the pages of a book--you touch it and it crumbles to dust.
HART WEGNER
Off Paradise: Stories
Childhood is that time in which we never question the fact that every adult act is not only an autonomous occurrence in the universe, but that it is also filled, packed, overflowing with meaning, whether that meaning works for ill or good, whether the ill or good is or is not comprehended.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Neverÿon
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
ABRAHAM SUTZKEVER
Family Circle Magazine, Aug. 9, 2005
I hated the company of other children. I wanted to be a grownup person, to be taken seriously. I hated the idea of childhood; I thought it was a moment of endless stupidity.
KARL LAGERFELD
"In the Now", The New Yorker, Mar. 19, 2007
Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things -- new experiences, new emotions -- and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Childhood has no necessary connection with age.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
SAINT PAUL
1 Corinthians 13:11
Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment.
TOM STOPPARD
The Coast of Utopia
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Wine from these Grapes
I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Power and the Glory