To see your child through the Eyes of Delight is the
greatest gift in the
world you can
give to your child
and to yourself.
--John Breeding
All About Children:
Selected Quotations
Contributed by
Leonard Roy Frank
Children have never been very good at listening
to their elders, but they have never failed to
imitate them.
JAMES BALDWIN,
Nobody Knows My Name:
More Notes of a Native Son
3, 1961
It's frightening to think that you mark your
children merely by being yourself.
SIMONE de BEAUVOIR
Les Belles Images
3, 1966
tr. Patrick O'Brian, 1968
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
"The Family," Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
ed. William Drysdale, 1887
[In April 1950, a "mute and autistic" 341/2-month-
old boy was administered 20 ECTs after being
referred to the children's ward of New York's
Bellevue Hospital. A month later he was
discharged.] The discharge note indicated
"moderate improvement, since he was eating and
sleeping better, was more friendly with the other
children, and he was toilet trained."
LAURETTA BENDER
"The Development of a Schizophrenic Child Treated with
Electric Convulsions at Three Years of Age,"
in Gerald Caplan, ed.
Emotional Problems of Early Childhood 1955
We are now conducting a sort of general warfare
against children, who are being abandoned,
abused, aborted, drugged, bombed, neglected,
poorly raised, poorly fed, poorly taught, and
poorly disciplined. Many of them will not only find
no worthy work, but no work of any kind. All of
them will inherit a diminished, diseased, and
poisoned world. We will visit upon them not only
our sins but also our debts. We have set before
them thousands of examples - governmental,
industrial, and recreational - suggesting that the
violent way is the best way. And we have the
hypocrisy to be surprised and troubled when they
carry guns and use them.
WENDELL BERRY
"The Obligation of Care,"
Sierra
September-October 1995
Tew bring up a child in the wa he should go -
travel that wa yourself.
JOSH BILLINGS
His Sayings
78, 1867
I'm starting to wonder what my folks were up to at
my age that makes them so doggoned suspicious
of me all the time!
MARGARET BLAIR
in Leonard Louis Levinson, ed.
Bartlett's Unfamiliar Quotations
p. 336, 1971
Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the
highest aspiration they might have for their
children is for them to be wise - as priests,
prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized
competence and success are all that they can
imagine.
ALLAN BLOOM
"The Clean Slate,"
The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education
Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of
Today's Students, 1987
Dr. [Paula] Menyuk and her co-workers [at
Boston University's School of Education] found
that parents who supplied babies with a steady
stream of information were not necessarily
helpful. Rather, early, rich language skills were
more likely to develop when parents provided lots
of opportunities for their infants and toddlers to
"talk" and when parents listened and responded
to the babies' communications.
JANE E. BRODY
"Talking to the Baby: Some Expert Advice,"
New York Times
5 May 1987
"Teachers"... treat students neither coercively nor
instrumentally but as joint seekers of truth and of
mutual actualization. They help students define
moral values not by imposing their own moralities
on them but by positing situations that pose hard
moral choices and then encouraging conflict and
debate. They seek to help students rise to higher
stages of moral reasoning and hence to higher
levels of principled judgment.
JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS
Leadership
17, 1978
Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a
boy?
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
2.23, 1812-1818
A child. . . opens and closes like a blossom.
ELIAS CANETTI, 1978
The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms,
Fragments: 1973-1985
tr. Joel Agee, 1989
Education should be constructed on two bases:
morality and prudence. Morality in order to assist
virtue, and prudence in order to defend you
against the vices of others. In tipping the scales
toward morality, you merely produce dupes and
martyrs. In tipping it the other way, you produce
egotistical schemers.
CHAMFORT (1741-1794)
Maxims and Thoughts
5, 1796
tr. W. S. Merwin, 1984
While you were a child, I endeavored to form your
heart habitually to virtue and honor, before your
understanding was capable of showing you their
beauty and utility.
LORD CHESTERFIELD
letter to his son
3 November 1749
Birth is much, but breeding's more.
JOHN CLARKE, ed.
Proverbs: English and Latine
p. 103, 1639
It [is] very unfair to influence a child's mind by
inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to
years of discretion to choose for itself.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
in Tryon Edwards et al., eds.
The New Dictionary of Thoughts
p. 156, 1891-1955
A youth is to be regarded with respect.
CONFUCIUS
(551-479 B.C.)
Confucian Analects
9.22
tr. James Legge, 1930
A belief constantly inculcated during the early
years of life, while the brain is impressible,
appears to acquire almost the nature of an
instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that
it is followed independently of reason.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
2nd ed., 4, 1874
What we found in examining diaries, letters,
autobiographies, pediatric and pedagogical
literature back to antiquity was that good
parenting appears to be something only
historically achieved, and that the further one
goes back into the past the more likely one would
be to find children killed, abandoned, beaten,
terrorized and sexually abused by adults. Indeed,
it soon appeared likely that a good mother, one
who was reasonably devoted to her child and
more or less able to empathize with and fulfill its
needs, was nowhere to be found prior to modern
times. It seemed to me that childhood was one
long nightmare from which we have only
gradually and only recently begun to awaken.
LLOYD deMAUSE
"Psychohistory and Psychotherapy,"
Foundations of Psychohistory
1992
When you arrange parenting modes on a scale of
decreasing health, from empathic down to the
most destructive child-battering parents, you
have also listed historical modes of child care
reaching back into the past. It is as though
today's child abuser were a sort of "evolutionary
arrest," a psychological fossil, stuck in a
personality mode from a previous historical epoch
when everyone used to batter children.
Ibid.
The certainty with which the effective prohibition
of incest has been declared leads one to look for
the evidence these authors might have for their
assertions. Yet such a search soon proves quite
fruitless. . . consider the evidence for the opposite
hypothesis: That it is incest itself-and not the
absence of incest-that has been universal for
most people in most places at most times.
Furthermore, the earlier in history one searches,
the more evidence there is of universal incest,
just as there is more evidence of other forms of
child abuse.
LLOYD deMAUSE
"Universality of Incest,"
The Journal of Psychohistory
19, 2, 1991
There is hardly an imaginable form of genital
assault that is not regularly performed on
children.
Ibid.
Nothing can be more graphic of our hatred of
children than an infant mortality rate of American
babies in some of our largest cities that is close
to that of a Third World country, or than the fact
that we tolerate the regular use of poisonous
drugs by millions of our teenagers. That we
choose to buy aircraft carriers at the price of dead
children may not be obvious, but it is true
nonetheless.
Lloyd deMause
"It's Time to Sacrifice. . . Our Children,"
The Journal of Psychohistory
18, 2, 1990
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims
of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of
intact ones. PETER DE VRIES
The Tunnel of Love
8, 1954
Every baby born into the world is a finer one than
the last.
CHARLES DICKENS
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
36, 1839
In the little world in which children have their
existence, whosoever brings them up, there is
nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as
injustice.
CHARLES DICKENS Great Expectations
9, 1861
Children have to be educated, but they have also
to be left to educate themselves.
ERNEST DIMNET
The Art of Thinking
2.5, 1928
The values inculcated by status-insecure parents
are such that their children learn to put personal
success and the acquisition of power above all
else. They are taught to judge people for their
usefulness rather than their likableness. Their
friends, and even future marriage partners, are
selected and used in the service of personal
advancement; love and affection take second
place to knowing the right people. They are
taught to eschew weakness and passivity, to
respect authority, and to despise those who have
not made the socio-economic grade. Success is
equated with social esteem and material
advantage, rather than with more spiritual values.
NORMAN F. DIXON
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
22, 1976
How is it that little children are so intelligent and
men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
ALEXANDER DUMAS (1802-1870)
in L. Treich
L'Esprit Francais
1947
So long as little children are allowed to suffer,
there is no true love in this world.
ISADORA DUNCAN
"Memoirs," 1924
This Quarter
Autumn 1929
Come mothers and fathers
throughout the land
And don't criticize
what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
BOB DYLAN
"The Times They Are A-Changin" (song)
1963
Parents forgive their children least readily for the
faults they themselves instilled in them
MARIE von EBNER-ESCHENBACH
Aphorisms
p. 31, 1880-1905
tr. David Scrase and Wolfgang Mieder, 1994
That was and still is the great disaster of my life -
that lovely, lovely little boy. . . . There's no
tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things
never get back to the way they were.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890-1969)
on the death of his first son Doud Dwight ("Icky")
at age three
in "Ike," television documentary
PBS, 15 October 1986
I like my boy with his endless sweet soliloquies
and iterations and his utter inability to conceive
why I should not leave all my nonsense,
business, and writing and come to tie up his toy
horse, as if there was or could be any end to
nature beyond his horse. And he is wiser than we
when [he] threatens his whole threat "I will not
love you."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
journal
9 July 1839
It is so easy to give a naughty boy a slap,
overpower him in an instant, and make him obey,
that in this world of hurry and distraction, who can
possibly spend time to wait for the slow return of
his reason and the conquest of himself in the
uncertainty too whether that will ever come.
Ibid.
9 November 1839
My son, a perfect little boy of five years and three
months, had ended his earthly life. You can never
sympathize with me; you can never know how
much of me such a young child can take away. A
few weeks ago I accounted myself a very rich
man, and now the poorest of all.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
soon after Waldo's death from scarlet fever
letter to Thomas Carlyle
28 February 1842
Children measure their own life by the reaction,
and if purring and humming [are] not noticed,
they begin to squeal; if that is neglected, to
screech; then, if you chide and console them,
they find the experiment succeeds, and they
begin again. The child will sit in your arms if you
do nothing, contented; but if you read, it misses
the reaction, and commences hostile operations.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
journal
October? 1843
The cardinal virtue of a teacher [is] to protect the
pupil from his own influence.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Notebook Platoniana,"
p. 11, 1845-1848
We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of
children that makes the heart too big for the body.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Illusions,"
The Conduct of Life
1860
A low selflove in the parent desires that his child
should repeat his character and fortune. . . . I
suffer whenever I see that common sight of a
parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of
thinking and being on a young soul to which they
are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be
themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You
are trying to make another you. One's enough.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)
"Education,"
Lectures and Biographical Sketches
1883
The secret of Education lies in respecting the
pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall
know, what he shall do. It is chosen and
foreordained, and he only holds the key to his
own secret. . . . Respect the child. Wait and see
the new product of Nature. Nature loves
analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child.
Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his
solitude.
Ibid.
Of course you will insist on modesty in the
children, and respect to their teachers, but if the
boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you
are wrong and sets you right, hug him!
Ibid.
The flowers talk when the wind blows over them.
WALDO EMERSON, at age 4
in Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal
4 June 1840
The report of the Central Commission relates that
the manufacturers began to employ children
rarely of five years, often of six, very often of
seven, usually of eight to nine years; that the
working day often lasted fourteen to sixteen
hours, exclusive of meals and intervals; that the
manufacturers permitted overlookers to flog and
maltreat children, and often took an active part in
so doing themselves.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
The Conditions of the Working Class in England
in 1844
1887
[In cases of enuresis, i.e., bedwetting] I apply
usually [in the region of the boy's sexual organ] a
tolerably strong current for one to two minutes; at
the close, a wire electrode is introduced about
two centimeters into the urethra - in girls I apply
"small" sponge electrode between the labia close
to the meatus urethrae - and the faradic current
passed for one to two minutes with such a
strength that a distinct, somewhat painful
sensation is produced.
WILHELM ERB
Handbook of Electrotherapy, 1881
in Thomas S. Szasz
The Myth of Psychotherapy
6.1, 1978
When I was a boy I was my father.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
"Mock Confessional"
Open Eye, Open Heart
1973
How children survive being Brought Up amazes
me
MALCOLM S. FORBES
"Passing Parade,
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm: The
Capitalist's Handbook
1978
How true Daddy's words were when he said: "All
children must look after their own upbringing."
Parents can only give good advice or put them on
the right paths, but the final forming of a person's
character lies in their own hands.
ANNE FRANK
15 July 1944
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
tr. B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, 1952
Wise parents offer criticism only when asked, and
then minimally.
LEONARD ROY FRANK
Wise teachers create an environment that
encourages students to teach themselves.
Ibid.
Wise teachers impart their knowledge; inept ones
impose theirs.
Ibid.
What a difference it makes to come home to a
child!.
MARGARET FULLER
letter to friends, 1849
At a good Table we may go to School.
THOMAS FULLER, ed.
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs
823, 1732
Of some forty families I have been able to
observe, I know hardly four in which the parents
do not act in such a way that nothing would be
more desirable for the child than to escape their
influence.
ANDRÉ GIDE
journal, 1921 (detached page)
tr. Justin O'Brien, 1948
If children grew up according to early indications,
we should have nothing but geniuses.
GOETHE (1749-1832)
in Norman Lockridge, ed.
World's Wit and Wisdom
p. 352, 1936
Unlike grownups, children have little need to
deceive themselves.
GOETHE (1749-1832)
in W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, eds.
The Viking Book of Aphorisms
p. 385, 1962
When an order is given to someone under
hypnosis that he do something at a certain time
after he is brought back to consciousness he will
do his best to conform to the order however
absurd it might be. If he is prevented from
fulfilling the order, he will have stirrings of acute
guilt and anxiety. Most parents expect a great
deal from their children when they grow up. . . .
Suggestions made to children when very young
have the same effect as a post-hypnotic
suggestion - the child's whole life may be lived
with an anxious feeling that he should be doing
something other than what he is doing, that he
should be a "better" person than he is, should be
cleverer, more musical, a better athlete or
whatever it might be.
FELIX GREENE
The Enemy: What Every American Should Know
About Imperialism
4.2, 1970
[The parents of prodigies] convey enthusiasm
without conveying expectation. They reward their
children more for trying than winning.
EMILY GREENSPAN
Little Winners, 1983
in Jan Krakauer, "What Kind of Breakfast Are
They Feeding These Young Champions?"
Washington Post National Weekly Edition
15 February 1988
Never do for a child what he is capable of doing
for himself.
ELIZABETH G. HAINSTOCK
Teaching Montessori in the Home
1, 1968
I will hug him, so that not any storm can come to
him.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE
at 2 years and 8 months, speaking of his infant
friend,
n Nathaniel Hawthorne
16 March 1849
The American Notebooks
ed. Claude M. Simpson, 1932
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Are you a good little boy?
Julian: Yes.
Nathaniel: [Why] are you good?
Julian: Because I love all people.
Ibid.
format adopted
6 September 1849
Julian: Mamma, why is not dinner supper?
Mamma: Why is not a chair a table?
Julian: Because it's a teapot.
Ibid.
4 October 1849
I said to Julian, "Let me take off your bib" - and
he taking no notice, I repeated it two or three
times, each time louder than before. At last he
bellowed - "Let me take off your Head!"
Ibid.
20 February 1850
[Towards the end of a long buggy trip in the
country now under a full moon] the little man
behaved himself still like an old traveller; but
sometimes he looked round at me from the front
seat (where he sat between Herman Melville and
Evert Duyckinck) and smiled at me with a
peculiar expression, and put back his hand to
touch me. It was a method of establishing a
sympathy in what doubtless appeared to him the
wildest and unprecedentedest series of
adventures that had ever befallen mortal
travellers.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
referring to his son Julian then 5 years old
8 August 1851
The American Notebooks
ed. Claude M. Simpson, 1932
Virtue and a Trade are the best portion for
Children.
GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633)
ed.
Outlandish Proverbs
107, 1640
Better a snotty child than his nose wip'd off.
Ibid.
828
Babies are such a nice way to start people.
DON HEROLD (1889-1966)
in Laurence J. Peter
The Peter Prescription
12, 1972
He does not educate children but rejoices in their
happiness.
HERMANN HESSE (1877-1962)
Reflections
324, ed. Volker Michels, 1974
I remember a lot of talk and a lot of laughter. I
must have talked a great deal because Martha
used to say again and again, "You remember you
said this, you said that...." She remembered
everything I said, and all my life I've had the
feeling that what I think and what I say are worth
remembering. She gave me that.
ERIC HOFFER
on Martha Bauer, the woman who raised him
after his mother died
in Calvin Tompkins, "Profiles: The Creative
Situation,"
New Yorker
7 January 1967
The object of teaching a child is to enable him to
get along without his teacher.
ELBERT HUBBARD
A Thousand and One Epigrams
p. 107, 1911
Be patient with the boys - you are dealing with
soul-stuff.
ELBERT HUBBARD (1856-1915)
The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard
ed., Elbert Hubbard II
p. 78, 1927
Where parents do too much for their children, the
children will not do much for themselves
Ibid.
p. 193
I have noticed that youngsters given to the
climbing habit usually do something when they
grow up.
ELBERT HUBBARD (1856-1915)
The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard
ed., Elbert Hubbard II
p. 72, 1930
When I was a kid, my father told me every day,
"You're the most wonderful boy in the world, and
you can do anything you want to."
JAN HUTCHINS
radio talk-program host, KGO
San Francisco
17 May 1988
No day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a
little child will make it holier still.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
"Liberty of Man, Woman and Child,"
The Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll: Latest
1898
We are the world,
We are the children,
We are the ones
To make a better day.
MICHAEL JACKSON and LIONEL RICHIE
"We Are the World"
(song), 1985
It is while we are young that the habit of industry
is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The
fortune of our lives, therefore, depends on
employing well the short period of youth.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to his daughter Martha
28 March 1787
Let the children come to me, do not hinder them;
for to such belongs the kingdom of God.
JESUS
Mark 10:14
(Revised Standard Version)
Accustom your children constantly to this; if a
thing happened at one window and they, when
relating it, say that it happened at another, do not
let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not
know where deviation from truth will end.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
31 March 1778
in James Boswell
The Life of Samuel Johnson
1791
There must always be a struggle between a
father and son, while one aims at power and the
other at independence.
Ibid.
14 July 1763
Children have more need of models than of
critics.
JOSEPH JOUBERT (1754-1824)
Pensées, 1838
tr. Henry Attwell, 1877
Nothing exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the
environment, and especially upon children, than
the [unlived] life [of] the parents.
CARL G. JUNG
"Paracelsus," 1929
The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature
tr. R. F. C. Hull, 1966
