“Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.” Bill Cosby

“Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense.” W. Phelps

“A child is not frightened at the thought of being patiently transmuted into an old man.” Saint-Exupery

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” H. Hoover

“Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.” Goethe

“My mother didn’t breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend.” Rodney Dangerfield.

“A wild colt may become a sober horse.” Thomas Fuller

“One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old enough to give you presents they make at school.” R. Byrne

“Young people are thoughtless as a rule.” Homer

“You can’t expect a boy to be vicious till he’s been to a good school.” Saki

“Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.” John Milton

“Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that’s glandular. As for children, I keep as far from them as possible. I don’t like the sight of them. The scale is all wrong. The heads tend to be too big for their bodies, and the hands and feet are a disaster. They keep falling into things. The nakedness of their bad character! We adults have learned how to disguise our terrible character, but children, well, they are like grotesque drawings of us. They should be neither seen nor heard, and no one must make another one.” Gore Vidal

“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.” Clarence Darrow

“There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.” Emerson

“When you are eight years old, nothing is any of your business.” Lenny Bruce

“Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.” S. Freud

“All young people want to kick up their heels and defy convention; most of them would prefer to do it at a not too heavy cost.” Elmer Davis

“Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny, he thinks he is in the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.” Benjamin Spock

“Life’s aspirations come in the guise of children.” Rabindranath Tagore

“A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every passerby leaves a mark.” Chinese proverb

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. ” Rachel Carson.

“Those who love the young best stay young longest.” Edgar Friedenberg

“The most deadly of all sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.” Erik Erikson

“I see the mind of a five-year-old child as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and reactiveness.” Sylvia Ashton-Warner

“If God had wanted sex to be fun, He wouldn’t have included children as punishment.” E. Bluestone

“Don’t laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.” Logan Pearsall Smith

“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” Oscar Wilde

“It is true that a child is always hungry all over; but he is also curious all over, and his curiosity is excited about as early as his hunger.” C. Warner

“I was so naive as a child I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.” Johnny Carson

“Life does not begin at the moment of conception or at the moment of birth. It begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies” Anon

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” Erma Bombeck

“Hamlet is the tragedy of tackling a family problem too soon after college.” Tom Masson

“Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of aggravation later in life.” R. Byrne

“Wanted: Playpen, cot and highchair. Also two single beds.” Advertisement in the London Evening Standard

“He who has no hair on his lip cannot be trusted to do anything well.” Chinese proverb

“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.” H. Hulbert

“The adult with a capacity for true maturity is one who has grown out of childhood without losing childhood’s best traits” Joseph Stone

“I never reprimand a boy in the evening – darkness and a troubled mind are a poor combination.” Frank J. Boyden, Headmaster, Deerfield Academy

“If you’re not beguiling by age twelve, forget it.” Lucy

“It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth – and youth is the time of real tragedy – that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect.” H. L. Mencken

“I never met a kid I liked.” W. C. Fields