Popular quotes about Childhood! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 40
Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?
Richard Paul EvansI wasn't ever unable to function, but I did realize at some point that I had built a wall between myself and my childhood by saying, "I'm so glad that's over. Nothing can ever be as bad again," without understanding that my childhood was still very much with me.
Gloria SteinemGenius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.
Charles BaudelaireThe landscape of childhood shapes us as it shapes the characters in our stories. You never forget the sacred places of your childhood.
John DufresneAfter all, isn't that what really draws the line between childhood and adulthood, knowing that you are solely responsible for yourself? If so, then my childhood ended at fifteen.
LIZMost of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn't stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.
Jane SmileyI don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.
Fernando PessoaWe remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.
Giacomo LeopardiNever did I think that the university was properly ministerial to the society around it. Rather I thought and think that society is ministerial to the university, and I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can in turn be a blessing to society.
Allan BloomIm from Connecticut. My Mom is an army brat, and my Dad is a navy brat. My childhood was fun. My parents are still together. My childhood was pretty carefree.
Cassie VenturaI grew up loving cars. It was completely and utterly, without a doubt, my childhood dream. Whether your childhood dream progresses or changes, you turn into a man and you probably shouldn't still have that same dream.
Dominic CooperThere are those uncomfortable things that've passed that you have to deal with or they define you, like childhood trauma. Like when I'm lost, I just feel like somewhere along the line, if you've gone through any childhood trauma, it makes you lose your essence and it takes a while to get that back. There are certain things about that that push my buttons.
Mike NessMy childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didnt mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But its good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.
Joni MitchellSo much of what holds us back in life are the long-held resentments stemming from childhood.
Gabrielle BernsteinI am obsessed with Chinese restaurants. Like many Americans, I first discovered them in my childhood.
Jennifer LeeMy dad is Irish. I spent my childhood going back and forth between Ireland and America.
Olivia WildeAt one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a bookโthat string of confused, alien ciphersโshivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
Alberto ManguelWe stand now at the turning point between two eras. Behind us is a past to which we can never return... The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation... the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.
Arthur C. ClarkeYou never know how things are going to fit. So, you don't count your eggs until they hatch. You can't pre-project that. I mean, this was literally like a childhood fantasy of mine, to be able to work in action. You know, growing up on Disney films like Pocahontas and wanting to enter into that, or Aladdin and how he's fighting - being your own hero, being your own heroine is like every one's dream.
Jena MaloneThe truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.
Alice MillerLove childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
Jean-Jacques RousseauThe structures of neoliberal modernity do more than disinvest in young people and commodify them, they also transform the protected space of childhood into a zone of disciplinary exclusion and cruelty, especially for those young people further marginalized by race and class who now inhabit a social landscape in which they are increasingly disparaged as flawed consumers or pathologized others.
Henry GirouxChildhood has it's own way of seeing, thinking, and feeling, and nothing is more foolish than to try to substitute ours for theirs.
Jean-Jacques RousseauProbably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.
Roberto BolanoThe Things that never can come back, are several - Childhood - some forms of Hope - the Dead.
Emily DickinsonWe like the idea of childhood but are not always crazy about the kids we know. We like it, that is, when we are imagining our ownchildhoods. So part of our apparent appreciation of youth is simply envy.
C. SommervilleFor children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don't feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say 'When I grow up,' there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?
Ian McewanIn civilized places idleness, once the prerequisite for abstract thought, poetry, religion, philosophy, and falling in love, has become a character flaw. In America we've managed to stamp it out almost completely, and few people under forty can remember a single moment of it, even in earliest childhood. The phrase 'spare time' has vanished from the land.
Barbara Hollandwe have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.If we are not reborn if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living.
Paulo CoelhoRemember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.
Anne LamottOn the day long after childhood when I suddenly heard of his death, the sky grew dark above my head. I was walking on a Southern highway, and a friend driving in a pony carriage passed me, stopped and said, "Have you heard that Charles Dickens is dead?" It was as if I had been robbed of one of my dearest friends.
Margaret Elizabeth SangsterMemories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it's like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn't exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day's work and always brings a smile to your face.
Bob MarleyThere was the usual dreaminess, I suppose. Also a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset to a literary life. Not being fluent on oneโs feet sends one to the page and a habit is born.
Lorrie MooreListen, everything I did in my childhood was competitive. Everything we did my dad made it into a game to win. We used to drive my mum nuts.
Lee WestwoodI'm not the most sophisticated person. I'm not the smartest person in the world. But, I know what makes me excited about life, from Spielberg movies to Michael Jackson music videos to cartoons on Saturday mornings, which made my childhood.
Jon M. ChuI dont remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building.
Renzo PianoAn indoor (or backseat) childhood does reduce some dangers to children; but other risks are heightened, including risks to physical and psychological health, risk to children's concept and perception of community, risk to self-confidence and the ability to discern true danger
Richard LouvIn my journey to becoming an artist who writes, I tend to start my idea process with simple, concrete messages that relate to what kids may be experiencing as they navigate through childhood and adolescence putting together building blocks of the foundations on which they will become adults.
Floyd CooperI found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood; and so I started to write in earnest.
Jean PlaidyChocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: Deliciusness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.
Mariska Hargitay