Childhood Quotes

Most popular childhood quotes

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults. - Brian Aldiss quote.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.

Adulthood

Great is the man who does not lose his child mind. - Mencius quote.
Great is the man who does not lose his child mind.
That great Cathedral space which was childhood. - Virginia Woolf quote.
That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child.

growing up life

Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play.

maturity

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.

age

Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.

old age

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. - Mark Twain quote.
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

memory

When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood.

nostalgia

I still live in and on the sunshine of my childhood. - Chr. Morgenstern quote.
I still live in and on the sunshine of my childhood.

personal parenting

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become. - Louis Pasteur quote.
When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.

children

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. - Fred Rogers quote.
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

play

When everything is astonishing, nothing is astonishing; this is how the world is to children. - Antoine de Rivarol quote.
When everything is astonishing, nothing is astonishing; this is how the world is to children.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell.
So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. - Gaston Bachelard quote.
So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.
Childhood is a thing that happens so early you don't forget it.  Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood. - Beryl Bainbridge quote.
Childhood is a thing that happens so early you don't forget it.  Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.
Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth—two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age. - Ambrose Bierce quote.
Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth—two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland.  It becomes a hell. - Louise Bogan quote.
But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland.  It becomes a hell.
The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

America

The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth.  And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth.  And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

youth

Childhood is a disease—a sickness that you grow out of. - William Golding quote.
Childhood is a disease—a sickness that you grow out of.
Children are incurable romantics.  Brimful of romance and tragedy, we whirl through childhood hopelessly in love with our parents.
Roger Gould Transformations: Growth and Change in Adult Life

children

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. - Graham Greene quote.
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

future growing up

Childhood is a short season. - Helen Hayes quote.
Childhood is a short season.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in light out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing.  The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. - Eugène Ionesco quote.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in light out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing.  The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal.  We all serve our time. - P. D. James quote.
Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal.  We all serve our time.
Childhood does sometimes pay a second visit to man—youth never. - Anna Jameson quote.
Childhood does sometimes pay a second visit to man—youth never.
Anna Jameson Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations

youth aging

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is. - Edna St. Vincent Millay quote.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
Nobody that matters, that is.
The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day. - John Milton quote.
The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness.  After that, you know too much. - Tom Stoppard quote.
Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness.  After that, you know too much.
The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses. - Edward Teller quote.
The eyes of childhood are magnifying lenses.
Edward Teller Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts. - Thornton Wilder quote.
I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

unhappiness talent

Children are an enlarging, if sobering, experience, and often amusing.  But childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it. - George Will quote.
Children are an enlarging, if sobering, experience, and often amusing.  But childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.

children

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero. - Pablo Picasso quote.
What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.

genius

Just tell me how you judge your childhood and youth, and I will tell you who you are. - Søren Kierkegaard quote.
Just tell me how you judge your childhood and youth, and I will tell you who you are.

youth