Parents should work together as efficiently as two bookends.
Marcelene Cox (1900-1998) American writer, columnist, aphorist
“Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal (Aug 1957)
(Source)
Quotations about:
parenting
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
If we have a decent sort of cat to begin with, and have always treated it courteously, and aren’t cursed with meddling, bullying natures, it’s a pleasure to let it do as it pleases. With children, this would be wicked and irresponsible, so raising children involves a lot of effort and friction. They need to be taught how to tie their shoes and multiply fractions, they need to be punished for pocketing candy in the grocery store, they need to be washed and combed and forced to clean up their rooms and say please and thank you.
A cat is our relief and our reward.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
King Lear, Act 1, sc. 4, l. 302ff [Lear] (1606)
(Source)
Two things have always been true about human beings. One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it’s getting worse. It’s because you get older, your responsibilities are different. Now I’m taking care of children instead of being a child. It makes the world look scarier. That happens to everyone.
Penn Jillette (b. 1955) American stage magician, actor, musician, author
“Honest Questions with Penn Jillette,” Interview by Glen Beck, CNN (2 Nov 2007)
(Source)
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) American-British playwright, author, psychologist
The Measure of My Days (1968)
(Source)
Being a father
Is quite a bother,
But I like it, rather.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“Soliloquy in Circles,” New Yorker (27 Mar 1948)
(Source)
Reprinted in Versus (1949).
Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.
Dwight Lyman "D. L." Moody (1837-1899) American evangelist and publisher
God’s Good News, “Where Art Thou?” [Gen. 3:9] (1897)
(Source)
The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable — from table tapping to the superiority of their own children — has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don’t argue with it — especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Stranger in a Strange Land, ch. 18 (1960 ed., publ. 1991)
(Source)
An elided version is found in the 1961 published edition, in ch. 13.
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or a major movie star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word “collectible” as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
The world is not always a kind place. That’s something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.
If you bungle raising your children I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) First Lady of the United States (1961-1963), book editor, celebrity
Interview with Sander Vanocur, NBC News (1 Oct 1960)
(Source)
From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.
If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father’s vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practiced in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children’s faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents’ backs.
It reminds me of growing up in Chicago and having to shovel snow. I’ll give my dad credit; he never claimed it was to build character or teach me the value of hard work. “Snowblowers are expensive,” he used to say. “You’re free.” Once, I tried to appeal to my mom. “Don’t be such a wuss,” she suggested.
Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don’t put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.
Clara Lucas Balfour (1808-1878) English novelist, lecturer, temperance campaigner
Sunbeams for All Seasons: Counsels, Cautions, and Precepts (1861 ed.)
I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.
Parents forgive their children least readily for the faults they themselves instilled in them.
[Eltern verzeihen ihren Kindern die Fehler am schwersten, die sie selbst ihnen anerzogen haben.]
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms [Aphorismen], No. 107 (1880) [tr. Scrase/Mieder (1994)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Alternate translation:
Parents are least ready to forgive in their children faults which result from their own training.
[tr. Wister (1883)]
Par-runts of rugmonkeys everywhere are worrying that their children will want to become Force-wielding breath masked Sithlords? Sweet Cream-of-Jesus on TOAST POINTS, people!! So now we have to fear that every crib-lizard that loves Anakin Skywalker will become Evil Incarnate. It’s been a lovely planet, but I think I need to go, now.