child quotes

And don't you think you must be a very wicked little child†to be a wax-work child at all?

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^1  Miss Monflathers to Nell. The Old Curiosity Shop, ch.31.

Gamp would certainly have drunk its little shoes right off its feet, as with our precious boy he did, and arterwards send the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for any money it 'ud fetch as matches in the rough, and bring it home in liquor.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^4  Mrs Gamp. Martin Chuzzlewit, ch.25.

Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil's foot.

-Donne,John
c.1595^1605  'Song: Go and catch a falling star', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

A child of eight is many-sided. By eighteen most of his auspicious angles have been polished away; he is

-Douglas, (George) Norman
US    lawyer,    Associate    Justice    of    the    US    Supreme    Court (1939^80).       His       consistently       liberal       decisions       were occasionally   controversial,   such   as   the   stay   of   execution granted to the Rosenbergs, convicted spies, in1953.

By education most have been misled; So they believe, because they so were bred. The priest continues what the nurse began, And thus the child imposes on the man.

-Dryden,John
  The Hind and the Panther, pt.3, l.389^92.

Curious! I seem to hear a child weeping.

-Dyson,Will(iam Henry)
  Cartoon caption in the Daily Herald,17 May. French minister Clemenceau is shown leaving the Palais de Versailles with Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George after signing the peace treaty with Germany. The'child' is the generation of1940.

The mother's yearning, thatcompletest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  Adam Bede, ch.43.

I always say that a successful parent is one who raises a child so that they can pay for their own psychoanalysis.

-Ephron, Nora
  In The Guardian, 26  Jun.

The biggest difference between Lillian as a grown-up and Lillian as a child was that she was taller.

-Feibleman, Peter
  On Lillian Hellman. Lily.

What is the use of a new-born child?

-Frank, Anne
Reply when questioned as to the use of a new invention. Quoted in J Parton Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (1864), pt.4, ch.17.

I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls.

-of Bin Bin
My Brilliant Career, ch.38.

Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

-Goethe,JohannWolfgang von
  Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe,18  Jan.

The poet is the unsatisfied child who dares to ask the difficult question which arises from the schoolmaster's answer to his simple question, and then the still more difficult question which arises from that.

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
Recalled on his death,7 Dec1985.

Hisfacewearing thefixityof athoughtful child'swho has felt the pricks of life somewhat before his time.

-Hardy,Thomas
  Jude the Obscure, pt.1, ch.1.

I'm wild again Beguiled again A simpering, whimpering child again, Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

-Hart, Lorenz
  'Bewitched' (music by Richard Rodgers), from Pal Joey.

   Love, you shall perfect for me this child Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: Within new limits now, arrange the world And square the circle: four walls and a ring.

-Heaney, SeamusJustin
  Death of a Naturalist,'Poem: For Marie'.

Mama may have, papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own! That's got his own.

-Holiday, Billie
  'God Bless the Child', with  Arthur Herzog  Jr.

The Grizzly bear is huge and wild; He has devoured the infant child. The infant child is not aware He has been eaten by the bear.

-Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)
'Infant Innocence', collected  The Oxford Book of Light Verse (1938).

Personne ne garde un secret comme un enfant. No one keeps a secret like a child.

-Hugo,Victor Marie
  Les Mise¤  rables, vol.2, bk.7, ch.8.

   Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
  Letter to Charles Kingsley.