Quotes About Childhood

I took off the mask and looked in the mirror. I was the same child I was years ago. I hadn't changed at all... That's the advantage of knowing how to remove your mask. You're still the child, The past that lives on, The child. I took off the mask, and I put it back on, It's better this way. This way I'm the mask. And I return to normality as to a streetcar terminus. 11 August 1934

Let me return to childhood and stay there forever, caring nothing for the values that grown men give to things or for the relationships that grown men establish between them.

Seeing the immanent futility of all forms of action was, from childhood on, one of my favorite means of detaching myself even from myself.

Cómo sabéis que viajando así no me rejuvenezco oscuramente? Infantil de absurdo, revivo mi propia infancia y juego con las ideas de las cosas como con soldados de plomo, con los cuales, de pequeño, hacía cosas que nada tenían que ver con un soldado.   Ebrio de errores, me pierdo a veces por sentirme vivir.

Con pequeños malentendidos con la realidad construimos las creencias y las esperanzas, y vivimos de las cortezas a las que llamamos panes, como los niños pobres que juegan a ser felices.

Ah, my dead childhood! A corpse ever alive in my breast!

Dicen los ocultistas, o algunos de ellos, que hay momentos supremos del alma en que ésta recuerda, con la emoción o con parte de la memoria, un momento, o un aspecto, o una sombra de una encarnación anterior. Y entonces, como regresa a un tiempo que está más cerca que su presente del origen y del comienzo de las cosas, siente, en cierto modo, una infancia y una liberación.

A criança que pensa em fadas e acredita nas fadas Age como um deus doente, mas como um deus. Porque embora afirme que existe o que não existe Sabe como é que as coisas existem, que é existindo, Sabe que existir existe e não se explica, Sabe que não há razão nenhuma para nada existir, Sabe que ser é estar num ponto Só não sabe que o pensamento não é um ponto qualquer.

Ever since I was a child, the intrinsic futility of all forms of action has been a cherished touchstone for my detachment from everything, including me.

Appena uscito da un'infanzia vagamente triste e diversa, una volta, nel contemplare da un colle la linea maestosa dei monti che azzurrina, in profili, scompariva all'orizzonte, nel contemplare i campi, mi parve all'improvviso che tutto scomparisse, prendendo [...] e che un abisso invisibile, una cosa che non somigliava all'esistenza occupasse - non lo spazio, ma il modo in cui io pensavo il visibile.

When I was little I didn't know I'd grow up. Or I knew but didn't feel it. Time at that age doesn't exist. Each day it's the same kitchen table With the same backyard outside, And sadness, when felt, Is sadness, but you aren't sad.

I saw dawn break and felt happy; today I see dawn break, feel happy, and become sad. The child is still there but has fallen silent. I see the way I saw, but from behind my eyes I see myself seeing, and that is enough to darken the sun, to make the green of the trees old, and to wilt the flowers before they open.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.

Wesley, the younger child, had had rheumatic fever when he was seven and Mrs. May thought this was what had caused him to be an intellectual.

And as for that strangeness in your gut, that comes from you, not the Lord. When you were a child you had worms. As likely as not you have them again.

With grown people, a road led either to heaven or hell, but with children there were always stops along the way where their attention could be turned with a trifle.

The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.

When he was four years old, his father had brought him home a tin box from the penitentiary. It was orange and had a picture of some peanut brittle on the outside of it and green letters that said, "A NUTTY SURPRISE!" When Enoch had opened it, a coiled piece of steel had sprung out at him and broken off the ends of his two front teeth. His life was full of so many happenings like that that it would seem he should have been more sensitive to his times of danger.

He was four or five.

Wesley, the younger child, had had rheumatic fever when he was seven and Mrs. May thought that this was what had caused him to be an intellectual.

She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head. Two wings of gray hair protruded on either side of her florid face, but her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. Were it not that she was a widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and who was supporting him still, "until he got on his feet," she might have been a little girl that he had to take to town.

Anyone who has survived childhood, has enough material to write for the last of her life.

Anyone who has survived childhood, has enough material to write for the rest of her life.