Children Quotes

What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.

Children should be very understanding of grown-ups.[translation by Richard Howard]Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.[translation by Katherine Woods][Les enfants doivent être très indulgents envers les grandes personnes.]

All grown-ups were once children first. But few of them remember it.[translation by Richard Howard]All grown-ups were once children – although few of them remember it.[translation by Katherine Woods][Toutes les grandes personnes ont d’abord été des enfants. (Mais peu d’entre elles s’en souviennent.)]

When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.

We never know how to put ourselves in the place of children; we do not enter into their ideas; we lend them ours, and, always following our own reasonings, with chains of truths we heap up only follies and errors in their heads.[Nous ne savons jamais nous mettre à la place des enfants; nous n’entrons pas dans leurs idées, nous leur prêtons les nôtres; et, suivant toujours nos propres raisonnements, avec des chaînes de vérités nous n’entassons qu’extravagances et qu’erreurs dans leur tête.]

We must leave our children to fate.

Small children are great accepters. They don’t understand shame, or the need to hide things.

Sick children inevitably become arrested: You are fated to live out your days as the child you were when diagnosed, the child who believes there is life after a novel ends. And we, as adults, we pity this, so we pay for your treatments, for your oxygen machines. We give you food and water though you are unlikely to live long enough…

Only the children know what they’re looking for.[translation by Richard Howard]Only the children know what they are looking for.[translation by Katherine Woods][Les enfants seuls savent ce qu’ils cherchent.]

It’s the well-behaved children, that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on they make society pay dearly. Watch out for good boys.[Ce sont les enfants sages, qui font les révolutionnaires les plus terribles. Ils ne disent rien, ils ne se cachent pas sous la table, ils ne mangent qu’un bonbon a a fois, mais plus tard ils le font payer cher a la Société. Méfiez-vous des enfants sages!]

If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.