Quotes About Childhood

Kingsley used to tell the following anecdote about sibling rivalry – how he found me, when I was four or five, lying on the stairs in an ecstasy of grief, how he worriedly knelt at my side and, after several minutes, managed to quell my hiccuppy gaspings, my heaving chest. Then he said, 'Easy now . . . What is it?' When at last I could find and shape the words, I said, 'Philip had a biscuit' . . .

Regina Waldman, a young Jewish girl living in Libya, who was nine years old in 1957, recalled an incident in her own school. A teacher asked the children in an arithmetic lesson: 'If you have ten Jews and you kill five, how many do you have left?' That, she reflected many years later, 'was my first taste of hate.'13

The secret to survival was in seeing the world through the eyes—and heart—of a child. That was Merry's lesson to her sisters. To treasure life, and most of all, to love. Simply, unconditionally and with joyful abandon. To love without demanding or expecting anything in return.

To feel nature as a child is much more important than just being able to list names of birds, or plants or animals. That kind of heart isn't something you can teach a child in books.

It was magnificent," he said, as he took his seat. "Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood. That's rather a broad idea, I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature

I've often observed that men and women who were young children during these years [of defeat in war] have a certain seriousness about them; there was too little laughter in their childhoods.

I'd been a child with my head in a bag. All I'd seen day after day was Gion, so much so that I'd come to think Gion was everything, and that the only thing that mattered in the world was Gion. But now that I was outside Kyoto, I could see that for most people life had nothing to do with Gion at al; and of course, I couldn't stop from thinking of the other life I'd once led.

Meus encontros com o General me lembravam certa vez quando, ainda criança, eu lutara por subir numa árvore e pegar certa folha no alto. Era tudo uma questão de movimentos cautelosos, suportando o desconforto até finalmente atingir meu objetivo.

Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

You, Comrade Rubashov, have just used the same arguments as this women's delegation from Manchester. You, of course, know better than these women. So one may wonder at your using the same arguments. But then, you have something in common with them: you were given a watch as a child….

Willy: Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swings between them? Linda: Yeah, like being a million miles from the city.

Your blanket is all torn because it's old." "It is not old," Jane said. "But it is old," Jane's mother said. "We bought it when you were born. And then we had to wash it lots of times. And we washed it and washed it, and now it is all worn out. Look, you have a nice new big blanket. You don't need that old blanket. That old blanket is like a rag now, darling.

One time there was a girl. Her name was Jane. She was a little baby. And she had a blanket. It was a small blanket. It was pink, and soft, and warm. In the morning she woke up. And the first thing she did was to touch the blanket, and it felt soft and warm when she put her fingers on it. Jane loved her pink blanket.

The child is much nearer the vision of the self. We must become as little children before we can enter into the realm of truth. This is why we are required to put aside the sophistication of the learned. The need for being born again is insisted on. It is said that the wisdom of babes is greater than that of scholars. Sri

P...U...D...D...I...N...G Pudding, said Roger. They've kept some for us. She hasn't finished the word, said Dick. Titty was reading steadily on. H...E...A...D...S...End of word

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.

They were not friends, Comdrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Matthew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly, adult. They looked out into the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.

She remembers, for instance (though she hadn't been there), what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha in Abhilash Talkies. She remembers the taste of the tomato sandwiches—Estha's sandwiches, that Estha ate—on the Madras Mail to Madras.

L'enfance n'avait laissé sur eux aucune trace. Dépourvus de curiosité comme de doutes, ils étaient à leur manière terriblement adultes. (p.344)

La sonrisa era el único equipaje que había llevado consigo desde la niñez hasta la edad adulta.

they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine.

and I vaguely remembered, from the occasions in my childhood when they had brought me along, how dense and enormous and exciting they seemed.