quotations about childhood
Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
The rustling of a wild-bird's wings,
A star, a flower, a gush of rain,
The sight of sad or joyous things,
Oft makes me seem a child again:
With voiceless eloquence they come,
Bright phantoms of my childhood's home.
ROSA VERTNER JEFFREY
"My Childhood's Home"
The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
FRANK MCCOURT
Angela's Ashes
Childhood is a meadow
For angels without wings
Childhood is a meadow
Of toys an' rose-covered swings
With singing brooks
For laughing hearts at play
And a fence made of rainbows
To keep every care away
PERRY COMO
"Childhood Is a Meadow"
Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood.
GENE WOLFE
The Book of the Short Sun
In the man whose childhood has known caresses there is always a fibre of memory that can be touched to gentle issues.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
When you are a child, there is joy. There is laughter. And most of all, there is trust. Trust in your fellows. When you are an adult ... then comes suspicion, hatred, and fear.
PETER DAVID
Tigerheart
And where, on earth, dwell hope and truth?
In childhood's uncorrupted heart;
Alas! too soon to guileless youth
The world doth its dark code impart!
ANNE S. BUSHBY
"The Morn of Life"
Childhood is like a mist in so many ways. A mist in which a you is moving to become another you.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.
RICHARD PAUL EVANS
The Gift
Plans made in the nursery
Can change the course of history
DEPECHE MODE
"Shouldn't Have Done That"
It was strange how some of childhood's words and ways fell at the wayside and were left behind, while others clamped tight and rode for life, growing the heavier to carry as time passed.
STEPHEN KING
The Gunslinger
On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
J.M. BARRIE
Peter Pan
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present
Toyland, toy land
Little girl and boy land
While you dwell within it
You are ever happy there
Childhood's joy land
Mystic merry toy land
Once you pass its borders
You can ne'er return again
When you've grown up my dears
And are as old as I
You'll laugh and ponder on the years
That roll so swiftly by, my dears
That roll so swiftly by
DORIS DAY
"Toyland"
My childhood is like a part I once had in a play. I was the actress but not the author and now I can't remember any of my lines, although the stage sets are still so vivid that they dominate my dreams.
JOY COWLEY
Classical Music
That great Cathedral space which was childhood.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"A Sketch of the Past,", Moments of Being
That unpaced corridor which I called childhood, which was not living but rather some projection of the lightless womb itself.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
O how blessed it would be never to marry, or grow old; but to spend one's life innocently and indifferently among the trees and rivers which alone can keep one cool and childlike in the midst of the troubles of the world!
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn,", The Complete Short Fiction of Virginia Woolf
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears--
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain--
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN
"Rock Me to Sleep"