Quotes About Childhood

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness.

Play is the most natural method of self-healing that childhood affords.

You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play a child says things without uttering a word. You can see how he solves his problems. You can also see what's wrong. Young children, especially, have enormous creativity, and whatever's in them rises to the surface in free play.

There is in every child at every stage a new miracle of vigorous unfolding." ~

Nevertheless, it is true that the first discipline encountered by a young man is the one he must somehow identify with unless he chooses to remain unidentified in his years of need. The discipline he happens to encounter, however, may turn out to be poor ideological fare; poor in view of what, as an individual, he has not yet derived from his childhood problems, and poor in view of the irreversible decisions which begin to crowd in on him.

Cherishing the sweet reminiscence of the early hours of life can be experienced as real enchantment: Those hours when fantasy is given wings and imagination allows us to sail with our paper boats through the stern roads of our constricted life. ( "Paper boats forever" )

Tuesday, November 17th. 1896 ... I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense.

What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?

Dejar la tierra. La tierra de uno. Los árboles y avenidas. El olor del cardamomo y los keftes de espinada. Los sonidos de la infancia que todavía se alojan debajo de la cama y en algunas esquinas; los rincones consentidos de casa. La alberca en la que aprendí a nadar. La reja que imaginó mi primer beso. Las calles de mi barrio, tan bien trazadas.

And then I got into sports and gave my guitar to my brother Jeff who was just a little kid at that time.

The danger of growing up surrounded by these endless sweet and salty industrial concoctions is not that we are innately incapable of resisting them, but that the more frequently we eat them, especially in childhood, the more they train us to expect all food to taste this way.

Anything can start to taste good if you have enough positive memories of being fed it by a parent.

The rise of vast portions - particularly in fast-food restaurants - means that if we eat only the calories we need, we should often stop at half of something; or even a quarter. And no one - child or adult - seems to like the feeling of the glass- - or plate - half empty.

The existence of birthday cake ice cream suggests that we can no longer distinguish celebration foods from everyday ones. We are also not too sure whether we are children or adults.

Part of the magic of childhood for most of us, looking back, was the sensation of freedom in your own body - the feeling that these legs were made for skipping.

One of the reasons that we do not usually think of our tastes as learned is that most of the learning tends to happen in the very early years of life; and then it stops.

Our childhood experiences with food can trap us in destructive patterns for the rest of our lives.

Many people have absorbed the lesson from childhood that vegetables and pleasure - and more generally, healthy food and pleasure - can never go together.

What you taste as a child is still there in your adult brain, even if you haven't thought of it for years.

If you can cancel a child's hunger during those first three years - from conception to toddlerdom -you create possibilities that stretch decades into the future. If not, the consequences can last for generations.

Every bite is a memory and the most powerful memories are the first ones.

The childhood foods that we ache for are very specific to the place and the time where we grew up.

Childhood food memories, like family jokes, are often untranslatable to outsiders.

The importance of shared childhood food memories for bonding families together can be seen among expats who carry their 'homeland' with them in the form of ingredients smuggled in suitcases.