The Quote Garden ™

I dig old books. ™

Est. 1998
Quotations about Parents
You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around — and why his parents will always wave back. ~William D. Tammeus, in Kansas City Star, 1978
Making the decision to have a child is momentous — it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone, Village Voice, as quoted in Barbara Johnson, Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy!, 1990
Send your little child to bed happy. Whatever cares press, give it a warm good-night kiss as it goes to its pillow. The memory of this in the stormy years which fate may have in store for the little one will be like Bethlehem's star to the bewildered shepherds. — "My father — my mother loved me!" Fate cannot take away that blessed heart-balm. Lips parched with the world's fever will become dewy again at this thrill of youthful memories. Kiss your little child before it goes to sleep. ~Charles Bullock, 1861
When you have brought up kids, there are memories you store directly in your tear ducts. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
[N]one deserve so well of the world as good parents. There is no task so unselfish, so necessarily without return, though the heart is well rewarded, as the nurture of the children who are to make the world for one another when we are gone. ~Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, 1888
It is hard to say which is more indelible in a parent's memory — the anxious minutes that lasted forever or the cozy forevers that lasted a minute. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children. Now I have six children—and no theories. ~Author unknown, c.1946 [QuoteInvestigator.com]
The trouble with learning to parent on the job is that your child is the teacher. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, 1990
Children are a great comfort in your old age — and they help you reach it faster, too. ~Lionel M. Kaufman
Your children tell you casually years later what it would have killed you with worry to know at the time. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966, © Thomas Paine McLaughlin
Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Each day of our lives we make deposits into the memory banks of our children. ~Charles R. Swindoll
A parent's love is whole no matter how many times divided. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
In clash of wills, do not give in;
Good parents are made by discipline...
~Ogden Nash (1902–1971), "A Child's Guide to Parents"
A man is made or unmade before his seventh year, and there is a special lower hell for fathers and mother that have the «yes‑dear» habit. ~Austin O'Malley (1858–1932), Thoughts of a Recluse, 1898
There is a strong chance that siblings who turn out well were hassled by the same parents. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly. ~P.J. O'Rourke
Today the accent is on youth but the stress is on the parents. ~Larry Lujack, 1960s
As parents, we guide by our unspoken example. It is only when we're talking to them that our kids aren't listening. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
If Nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternatively, there would never be more than three in a family. ~Laurence Housman
Parenthood has its brightness. For one thing you can renew your acquaintance with fairies, something you are supposed to have dropped but have discreetly hidden in a cherished corner. Now it can come out, especially at story-telling time, and enjoy seeing the child on your knee grow starry-eyed, touched by the magic and mystery of another world, where no fear, no hurt, and only a few choice grown-ups like father, may enter. ~Angelo Patri, 1924 [a little altered —tg]
Parenthood is the passing of a baton, followed by a lifelong disagreement as to who dropped it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Having babies is fun, but babies grow up into people. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter, "The Price of Tomato Juice," written by Larry Gelbart & Gene Reynolds, 1975
Yes, having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit. ~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986
A mother always counts to ten,
And never, never peeks,
But always knows just where you hide,
And there she never seeks,
Until the very nick of time
Lest tears run down your cheeks.
~Robert Brault, "Hide and Seek," rbrault.blogspot.com
Hot dogs always seem better out than at home; so do French-fried potatoes; so do your children. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1963
What you don't realize as a kid is that if your parents are always going to be there for you, they aren't going to be somewhere else doing exciting and glamorous things. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
I am everlastingly thankful that a little of me is caught up in your being, and that you carry me into a future that I shall never know. ~Pam Brown, To a Very Special Daughter, 1991, helenexley.com
Now that... my kids are grown, I understand how much work and love it takes to raise and to keep a family together. The example of your strength, devotion, and patience is now rippling through the generations. Thank you! ~Forest Houtenschil, c.1980
What you must accept as a parent is that you cannot always be there for your child without sometimes ruining everything. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children. ~Sam Levenson
Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966, © Thomas Paine McLaughlin
Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is parents. ~John J. Plomp
Parenting is a stage of life's journey where the milestones come about every fifty feet. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. ~Author unknown
There is also a distinct sense of elation in doing trifling practical things for children. They are so small and so helpless that they contribute vastly to a comforting glow in the ego of the grown-up. When you have completed the rather difficult task of preparing a child for bed and actually getting him there, you have a sense of importance almost divine in its extent. ~Heywood Broun, "Holding a Baby," Seeing Things at Night, 1921
It is not until we have a child we cannot love enough that we realize why our mom loved us too much. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
A young lady is a female child who has just done something dreadful. ~Judith Martin
Tip for a parent trying to be the north star to a child desperate for sun: Sometimes it's enough just to shine. ~Susan Noyes Anderson, in reply to Robert Brault's "It is a story without a villain, the parent who tried to be the north star to a child desperate for the sun."
Conscience is less an inner voice than the memory of a mother's glance. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes. ~Chinese proverb
The hardest thing to accept as a parent is that you cannot apply the bandage before the bruise. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do — just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Parents know best how to push our buttons because they installed them. ~Author unknown
Setting a good example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age. ~William Feather, The Business of Life, 1949
I love her more than my own heart's blood; she is my child — part of that blood — part of myself — the better part... every look and word is engraved on my heart. ~Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797–1851), Lodore, 1835
Once you become the mommy or daddy in your child's world, it is the only world in which you exist, no matter how much you fancy there is a separate world of your own. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying. ~Fran Lebowitz
The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you are experienced, you are unemployed. ~Author unknown
The trouble with having a stubbornness contest with your kids is that they have your stubbornness gene. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
You have to fight your own battles, love. But I'm here in your corner with the bucket and sponge. ~Pam Brown, To a Very Special Daughter, 1991, helenexley.com
In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time. ~Author unknown
Important to remember in parenting is that children are not small adults, although parents are frequently large children. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
When we cannot understand our own children, we are apt to read our own faults into them. ~George Humphrey, "What Is Radio Doing to Us?," in Collier's, 1924
Life starts out as partly destiny and partly free will, but then you have kids, and it's all destiny. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Mother Nature is wonderful. Children get too old for piggy-back rides just about the same time they get too heavy for them. ~Author unknown
It is one thing to show your child the way, and a harder thing to then stand out of it. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example. ~Bernard Shaw
You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once. ~Polish proverb
A mother loves her child more than a father does, for she knows it's her own while he but thinks it's his. ~Menander (c.342–c.292 BCE), translated by Francis G. Allinson, 1921
The clash between child and adult is never so stubborn as when the child within us confronts the adult in our child. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs. ~P.J. O'Rourke
The parents continued to feed the remainder of the flock, but another day saw their second child depart. In the lonely nest there remained only one infant. Its parents' ministrations plainly did not suffice. It was more conservative and waited for abundant strength. For two days it waved its wings up and down as if training for a great event, and then it sailed away. The nest was empty — empty forever after. The parents sailed away, too. It was only humans that hung about a deserted nest! ~Rupert Hughes, The Old Nest, 1911
No child came home; rarely did one write, and then briefly. What notes were sent breathed affection and devotion, but they were poor substitutes for the visible, kissable, talkable children, of whom she possessed now only the photographs staring from wall and mantel. ~Rupert Hughes, The Old Nest, 1911
She could not blame her children for leaving. She had left her own home and her own home town when her husband left his. She had deserted her parents. They had deserted theirs — and they theirs — on back into the days when the nation was a wilderness, beyond the ocean into foreign countries, where forever backward the procession could be traced — children always leaving home, leaving home, leaving home. That was human history; and that eternal serial of heartache and farewell was the slow spelling of the word "progress" across the map of the world. ~Rupert Hughes, The Old Nest, 1911
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home. ~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986
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