Quotes & Sayings About Children's Day

Married life can seem as if it's only five days long. The first day you meet, the second day you marry, the third day your raise your children, the fourth day you meet your grandchildren, and the fifth day you die first or bury your spouse to go home alone for the first time in many years. — Mark Driscoll

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy. — Maria Montessori

Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you. — David Benioff

The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day ... It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. — Maurice Sendak

I promise that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to your families, to your children, your grandchildren, and others, on through the generations. Each of us is important to those who are near and dear to us and as our posterity reads of our life's experiences, they, too, will come to know and love us. And in that glorious day when our families are together in the eternities, we will already be acquainted. — Spencer W. Kimball

These days we have no true childhood, only a diseased precocity, introducing children to things that any decent man of Whittier's day, or of Armstrong's, would have considered unutterably vile. Therefore we have no true adulthood either, only a prolonged infantility, a curdled adolescence followed by old age and death. — Anthony M. Esolen

Dare we let children grow up with no vital contact with the Saviour, never intentionally and consciously put into His arms? Not to bring them to Him, not to teach them to walk toward Him, as soon as they can walk toward anyone, is wronging a child beyond words. The terrible indictment uttered by the Lord, "Them that were entering in ye hindered," and the millstone warning for offending little ones, are close akin to the deserts of those who ruin a man's whole day of life by wronging his morning hours. Not to help a child to know the saving power of Christ is to hold back a man from salvation. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Why do Britons keep stabbing each other in August? Why do seaside hotels burn down in August? Why do children disappear in August, examinations get easier and Heathrow become the world's worst airport? The answer lies not in reality but in appearance. News editors abhor a vacuum. Half an hour of airtime and 10 pages of news must be filled each day, whatever the weather. — Simon Jenkins

It's true that the hatred is still there. But it doesn't change anything. Our obligations are the same - to live and sanctify all life with our own. To participate in the world the best we know how, leaving it a better place than we found it. To raise families and teach our children to value life. What more can we do? Should we refuse to live because of the threat of death hanging over us? We've always been under sentence of death. Every generation that lives out its days in peace is a victory. Every day we live is a victory. — Ovadya Ben Malka

I definitely want children. That's important to me, so I just want to make sure that I'm completely prepared for it when that day comes. — Lance Gross

Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn's soul begs for the artist's touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

This was where war happened, in someone's backyard. Sometimes it was yours. Often, it was someone's a world away. But it did happen. In this moment. In the next breath. Every day.
Every day, someone lived in the midst of destruction and chaos. Every day, someone's flower boxes filled with gunpowder's haze, a child's laughter turned to tears. There had been a day when someone watered those flowers in the evening's peaceful quiet and the children caught fireflies in mason jars. And that day will come again, when the crickets and the bullets no longer have to compete for the night's stage. But for now, all anyone could do was fight on the crickets' behalf. — Kelseyleigh Reber

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway. — J.D. Vance

A cat met up with a big male rat in the attic and chased him into a corner. The rat, trembling, said, 'Please don't eat me, Mr. Cat. I have to go back to my family. I have hungry children waiting for me. Please let me go.' The cat said, 'Don't worry, I won't eat you. To tell you the truth, I can't say this too loudly, but I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat any meat. You were lucky to run into me.' The rat said, 'Oh, what a wonderful day! What a lucky rat I am to meet up with a vegetarian cat!' But the very next second, the cat pounced on the rat, held him down with his claws, and sank his sharp teeth into the rat's throat. With his last, painful breath, the rat asked him, 'But Mr. Cat, didn't you say you're a vegetarian and don't eat any meat? Were you lying to me?' The cat licked his chops and said, 'True, I don't eat meat. That was no lie. I'm going to take you home in my mouth and trade you for lettuce.' — Haruki Murakami

I had a beautiful dream the other day. I was coming home from work and you were standing behind white picket fence trimming roses. You were dressed up all in white. We saw each other from afar and smiled. We kissed, got inside our home where our two beautiful children were playing and waiting for us. We all hugged and I kissed your belly because that's where our third child was. You were pregnant. Than all got blurry and white... I was awake. I was sad because my dream has ended but I was happy at the same time because that was the most beautiful and purest dream I have ever had. — J. Zima

Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knife thrusts in the belly, starbursts of guns hot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesarean sections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day, those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children's clothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and books: being able to write about things I wouldn't normally write about, like a disappointing pancake, or monsters or opposite day is really different than writing about heartbreak and relationships. — Lisa Loeb

God is our Creator. He is loving, holy, and just. One day he will execute perfect justice against all sin. People are made in the image of God. We are beautiful and amazing creatures with dignity, worth, and value. But through our willful, sinful rebellion against God, we have turned from being his children to his enemies. Still, all people have the capacity to be in a restored loving relationship with the living God. Christ is the Son of God, whose sinless life gave him the ability to become the perfect sacrifice. Through his death on the cross, he ransomed sinful people. Christ's death paid for the sins of all who come to him in faith. Christ's resurrection from the dead is the ultimate vindication of the truth of these claims. The response God requires from us is to acknowledge our sin, repent, and believe in Christ. So we turn from sin, especially the sin of unbelief, and turn to God in faith, with the understanding that we will follow him the rest of our days. — J. Mack Stiles

I don't dislike them, nor do I like them. I've never understood why one must love children simply because they are children. I don't love people because they are people; in fact, I rarely like any people at all. If a child is somehow deserving of admiration, I certainly won't deny it, but why hand it out like candy on Queen's Day? — Kiersten White

We have got some mountains to move. Three billion people - half of God's children - are living on less than $2 a day. — Jim Wallis

What I'm interested in is the protection of children from violence, and they are exposed to violence every single day in the form of, as it's called, the news. Then you wonder why the children are running around, doing the things in the streets, doing the things that they've seen the adults doing in the so-called news. — Sinead O'Connor

Adults ... struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real. — Grant Morrison

I have always wanted my children's dads to be involved in their lives. Not just the day-to-day aspect, but the emotional shifts that they go through, when little things pop up - they need to be included, absolutely, and for the children to feel that they are. — Kate Winslet

The leaky-replacement hypothesis - assuming for the moment that it's correct - provides the strongest possible evidence for the closeness of Neanderthals and modern humans. The two may or may not have fallen in love; still, they made love. Their hybrid children may or may not have been regarded as monsters; nevertheless someone - perhaps Neanderthals at first, perhaps humans - cared for them. Some of these hybrids survived to have kids of their own, who, in turn, had kids, and so on up to the present day. Even now, at least thirty thousand years after the fact, the signal is discernible: all non-Africans, from the New Guineans to the French to the Han Chinese, carry somewhere between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA. One — Elizabeth Kolbert

What is disgraceful and outrageous is that 18,000 children die of hunger every day, every one of them a preventable death. That's what the controversy should be about. — John Powell

I've been a professional for I think 13, 14 years. It's not easy hitting balls every day and staying really motivated throughout the whole period. It's normal [that] you're going to have ups and downs. But I found my way again. And I love the sport. I love competing. I love battling. I love being out there and playing in front of crowds. This is what I've been doing since I was a child. There's nothing else that I want to do. — Jelena Jankovic

Allow me to introduce myself,
the name is Brown, Jane Brown,
and I am the greatest detective the world
has ever seen. I'm known to solve multiple cases,
on any given day, without even breaking a sweat.
In fact, I am working on one now. — A.J. DeJong

I'm very interested in the way the Internet has changed teenage life. Obviously it's very different from when I grew up, when there weren't even answering machines, much less computers. I was telling my children this the other day, and the little one said, "Did you have electricity, Mom?" and I was like okay, enough, kid. — Jennifer Egan

It was all beginning to run together in the back of Eleanor's mind, and the things that had probably really happened were confused with the things that probably hadn't. And every day everything in her whole past life - the real things and the imaginary things - was being pushed farther and farther back, because going to high school was so enormous, so vast! so different from all of Eleanor's life before. The milling crowds in the hall between classes, all those jostling elbows and swollen shoulders and bosoms, all those enormous hands and feet, they pushed and thumped and shoved at Eleanor's childhood, until there was no room anymore for anything but now, right now, a hurrying rushing now that was just incredibly thrilling, or absolutely rotten and just disgusting, this heaving present moment, right now. — Jane Langton

As a mom, I understand how important it is to ensure kids start their day right and always make sure my kids have a nutritious breakfast. One in five U.S. children live in homes where food is not always available, which is why I partnered with Kellogg's on their 'Share Your Breakfast' campaign, which provide breakfasts to kids in need. — Monica Potter

Being a mother is not about 'birthing a child into the world.' Rather, it is about repeatedly 'birthing into the child' a steady sense of their inestimable worth, a prized understanding of their authentic self, a conviction that the impossible is largely the stuff of myth, and an utterly unwavering belief that cold actions of men never represent the warm heart of God. It is the relentless act of birthing these things into the innermost soul of a thirsty child that makes a woman a mother. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I just want us to remember than when we became parents, we didn't change species. We're still humans. I mean, we're bad-ass humans, for sure, but humans nonetheless. We make mistakes, all day, and that's good. We want our children to see that. We want them to learn how to handle mistakes because that's an important thing to learn. We expect to make mistakes, we say we're sorry, we forgive ourselves, we shrug and smile, and we try again.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us. When you haven't been in the world long, it's hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don't even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this is the night. — Elena Ferrante

One of the realities of life is that few things of value ever come easy. A great marriage takes years of hard work - every day. There is never a time when I can say that I no longer need to work on being patient, tender, and conversant. I believe that marriage is forever, which means that you work through your problems and learn how to relate to each other no matter what it takes. Hog Hole marriages require daily effort and sacrifice. So do Hog Hole careers, friendships, children, and churches. It's never easy; few things of value ever are. A Hog Hole life is available to every person, but it takes determination, sacrifice, and work. In a word, discipline. — Bob Merritt

I would like to forget the image of the ship's crane at Southampton docks when it lifted into the sky the three wooden trunks which held all that my family owned. There is only one memory I want to preserve. It is Maria, who is also Zama, sipping condensed milk on the steps of the doep at night. The African nights were warm. The stars were bright. I loved Maria but I'm not sure she loved me back. Politics and poverty had separated her from her own children and she was exhausted by the white children in her care, by everyone and everything in her care. At the end of the day, away from the people who stole her life's energy and made her tired, she had found a place to rest, momentarily, from myths about her character and her purpose in life." (from "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy) — Deborah Levy

It was as if, once she was married, the woman had washed her hands of the girl. However, the welts on her back had been the final straw. Aye, they would leave for MacKay first thing tomorrow morning, Ross determined. He would take her home, where they could consummate their marriage in the bed where she would one day give birth to their children. Annabel's life here was done. She was his now. — Lynsay Sands

Nick laughed. "We'll have a celebration, all right. It's called Christmas."
"She's a Christmas baby? On the actual day?"
"Came a month earlier than we expected. Elizabeth had organized the children into a Christmas choir and planned a big party after the service on Christmas Eve." Nick chuckled. "She was not pleased when her pains started beforehand. — Debra Holland

One lesson we Duggars are emphatically taught is that humility is not weakness. In fact, it can be just the opposite. It takes a strong man to recognize his own faults and apologize to his wife and children for them. Dad's humility - not only that day but every day - causes us to respect and admire him even more. — Jana Duggar

Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.
If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. — C.S. Lewis

For as in the dead of night children are prey
to hosts of terrors, so we sometimes by day
are fearful of things that should no more concern us
than bogeys that frighten children in the dark.
This fright, this night of the mind must be dispelled
not by the rays of the sun, nor day's bright spears,
but by the face of nature and her laws. — Titus Lucretius Carus

On any given day in Spokane, Washington, there are more adult men per capita riding children's BMX bikes than in any other city in the world. — Jess Walter

The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high, but...
[very long pause]
sometimes it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question "Why?" Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed and spite, jealousy, and we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done, like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. And when that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore. — Ronald M. Moore

But her angry feminism had set as hard as concrete during years of living alongside the tough, hardworking, dirt-poor women of London's East End. Men often told a fairy tale in which there was a division of labor in families, the man going out to earn money, the woman looking after home and children. Reality was different. Most of the women Ethel knew worked twelve hours a day and looked after home and children as well. Underfed, overworked, living in hovels, and dressed in rags, they could still sing songs and laugh and love their children. In Ethel's view one of those women had more right to vote than any ten men. — Ken Follett

That day, instead, I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighbourhood. They were nervous, they were acquiescent. They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders, or they yelled terrible insults at the children who harassed them. Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, or with broad behinds, swallen ankles, heavy chests, they lugged shopping bags and small children who clung to their skirts ( ... ) they appeared to have lost those feminine qualities that were so important to us girls ( ... ) They had been consumed by the bodies of husbands, fathers, brothers, whom they ultimately came to resemble, because of their labors or the arrival of old age, of illness. When did that transformation begin? With housework? With pregnancies? With beatings? — Elena Ferrante

It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I've heard people say, "A free market in education is a bad idea because some child somewhere might fall through the cracks," even though in today's government school, millions of children are falling through the cracks every day. — Lawrence W. Reed

One of the peculiar children's perspective out of time allows him to take minute interest in every resident of the town and to chronicle everything we did for the entire day he lives over and over. — Ransom Riggs

Nurse's Song
WHEN the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.
No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.
Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.'
The little ones leaped and shouted and laugh'd
And all the hills echoed. — William Blake

Women's magazines will often ask me things like, 'All right, I need six five-minute happiness strategies.' And I say, well, there aren't any five-minute happiness strategies. This is something you have to do kind of every day for the rest of your life. Just like if you want to raise moral children or if you want to advance in your career. It's a goal you pursue your whole life. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

Do you dislike Children? I ask, entertained at the little one's cleverness in dodging capture attempts.
"I don't dislike them, nor do I like them. I've never understood why one must love children simply because they are children. I don't love people because they are people; in fact, I rarely like any people at all. If a child is somehow deserving of admiration, I certainly won't deny it, but why hand it out like candy on Queen's Day?"
I laugh, surprising him.
"Do you think me terribly cruel, then?"
"Actually, I agree. It is another great fault of mine my mother endeavored to correct. Children in general I've never cared for, though individual children I love very much."
-Quote from "Illusions of Fate" by Kiersten White p.17 — Kiersten White

The day I need a television puppet or clown to tell my children what's right and what's wrong, I'll bow out as a mother. — Elinor Smith

It's not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day. — Homer

And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, that's my gift to them and to all their children ever after, so don't talk to me about being hard. — Sebastian Faulks

If the homemakers of this country don't get the idea into their heads pretty soon that they are not going to be able to hold their own with the rest of the world, with no children, or one child in the family, there's a sad day of reckoning coming. — Gene Stratton-Porter

It's hard to think it's important to try out as cheerleader when you're starring on Broadway. But you do kind of miss the things that I now see my children doing. I'm just happy they are not actors. The Valentine's Day dance is really important. Pitching in Little League is very important. And the medals and the scouts are really important. — Bonnie Bedelia

The first couple of times she had come here, she had been sure that he changed overnight, that the shards of physiognomy that made up his whole reorganized when no one was looking. She became frightened of her commission. She wondered hysterically if it was like a task in a moral children's tale, if she was to be punished for some nebulous sin by striving to freeze in time a body in flux, forever too afraid to say anything, starting each day from the beginning all over again. — China Mieville

Children always forgive their mothers. That's the way God's designed them. He gives them two arms, two legs, and a heart that will cry 'mother' until the day it stops beating. — Nadia Hashimi

Out would come another star, winking at me over the white shoulder of the Rothorn. Round me stood the mountains, exquisite examples of peace - A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be - and here was I, minding because guests went into their bedrooms and told each other I had five children. Well, so I had. Nothing could possibly be more true. How vast, yet of what clear transparency - and minding because they said I was forty, which I certainly would be some day, if I went on living at the rate I was doing. How it were good to abide there and be free - The fact was, I reflected, my eyes on the glittering slopes of the Weisshorn, we were all too close together, and my guests, being of one family, only made this closeness worse. The remedy - it burst upon me suddenly in a flash, - was not to waste my serenity vainly longing for the guests I had to go, but to invite yet more of them. Unrelated ones. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Importance of technology is increasing every day, we must not deprive our children of technology, if we do then it's a social crime. — Narendra Modi

With the gentle force of their words, the dogged warmth of their embrace, and the assuring touch of souls softly bared, mothers are silently shaping whole societies and authoring entire cultures that sit poised on the horizon of the future. And although we ignorantly relegate such roles to some lower caste status, we would be wise to understand that the role of a mother sets the cadence of the future. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

When I went into the business, I sat down and figured that I was indeed one of fortune's children. Just think. There were 20 million buffalo, each worth at least $3
$60 million. At the very outside, cartridges cost 25 cents each, so every time I fired one I got my investment back twelve times over. I could kill a hundred a day ... That would be $6,000 a month
or three times what was paid, it seems to me, the President of the United States. Was I not lucky that I discovered this quick and easy way to fortune? I thought I was. — Frank Mayer

Today, tomorrow and every day, we will see at least 2,000 young children killed or seriously injured on the world's roads. This is unacceptable, preventable, and we have to stop it. We have the vaccines for this disease: helmets, seatbelts, speed enforcement, safe road design. We just need to use them. — Michelle Yeoh

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world. — Rudyard Kipling

Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired?
It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter, including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi" wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty." Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire families, all that is left is to fire teachers.
— Diane Ravitch

The lions sing and the hills take flight. The moon by day, and the sun by night. Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool. Let the Lord of Chaos rule.
-chant from a children's game heard in Great Arvalon, the Fourth Age — Robert Jordan

It's impossible to overvalue the importance of television - both in its serious and less serious functions. It's one of our most important ways of finding out the truth - and also of changing the world, and finding out what in the world needs changing. It's also an immense bringer of joy - I learnt how to laugh through television, and now my children and I, every day of every week, share the joy and stupidity of TV shows - they actually make us HAPPY — Richard Curtis

When I was a kid, my daily routine was playing make-believe, and I kind of created these stories throughout the day. And when it came time to go to preschool, my English wasn't really so great because my mother wanted me to learn Ukrainian, so she signed me up for these children's theater groups. — Nina Arianda

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The barber ran to the broken window, and saw Gavroche, who was running with all his might towards the Saint Jean market. On passing the barber's shop, Gavroche, who had the two children on his mind, could not resist the desire to bid him "good day", and had sent a stone through his sash.
"See!" screamed the barber, who from white had become blue, "he makes mischief. What has anybody done to this Gamin? — Victor Hugo

Children smile 400 times a day on average ... adults 15 times.
Children laugh 150 times a day ... adults 6 times per day.
Children play between 4-6 hours a day ... adults only 20 minutes a day.
What's happened? — Robert Holden

There's not a day I live that doesn't start with me getting up and first saying, "What can I do for somebody else?" Whether that means sending something to one of my children or picking up the phone and calling a stranger who is in the hospital, I start every day by wanting more for others than I do for myself. — Wayne Dyer

The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It's no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote. — Daniel J. Levitin

I wanted to tell him a story, but I didn't. It's a story about a Jew riding in a streetcar, in Germany during the Third Reich, reading Goebbels' paper, the Volkische Beobachter. A non-Jewish acquaintance sits down next to him and says, "Why do you read the Beobachter?" "Look," says the Jew, "I work in a factory all day. When I get home, my wife nags me, the children are sick, and there's no money for food. What should I do on my way home, read the Jewish newspaper? Pogrom in Romania' 'Jews Murdered in Poland.' 'New Laws against Jews.' No, sir, a half-hour a day, on the streetcar, I read the Beobachter. 'Jews the World Capitalists,' 'Jews Control Russia,' 'Jews Rule in England.' That's me they're talking about. A half-hour a day I'm somebody. Leave me alone, friend. — Milton Sanford Mayer

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one's fellows, their responsibilitie s as children of God, heirs of heaven. — Dorothy Day

We can draw no deadlines for God. He hastens or He delays as he sees fit. And his timing is all-loving toward his children. On, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness. I don't mean that we make peace with darkness. We fight for joy. But we fight as those who are saved by grace and held by Christ. We say ... that our night will soon- in God's good timing- turn to day. — John Piper

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India — Rudyard Kipling

Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they'll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I'm lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone's hallway. — Amanda Sledz

To be honest, I love watching some of the old cartoons and new ones that are popular. It's another way to make me happy and reminisce the good old times. Plus, it makes me forget the recreational world around me. If only the economy would let loose and not tire everyone out. I'm just saying. People have an inner child somewhere. I have one, too. So it's cool to have an inner child at times. It can brighten your day and see another view in life. — Simi Sunny

Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ's return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. — Anonymous

Being a member of the court is a lot like walking through fresh concrete. Do you remember doing that as a child and leaving a footprint and it hardens after you? I'm afraid that's what we do and we look back and we see those opinions we've written and they've sort of hardened after us. — Sandra Day O'Connor

But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of "The Three Bears," for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house." The moral of "Snow White" is "Never eat apples." The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand." [ ... ] and as the Baudelaire orphans sat and watched the dock fill with people as the business of the day began, they figured out something that was very important to them. It dawned on them that unlike Aunt Josephine, who had lived up in that house, sad and alone, the three children had one another for comfort and support over the course of their miserable lives. And while this did not make them feel entirely safe, or entirely happy, it made them feel appreciative. — Lemony Snicket

To this, Mrs. Nickleby only replied that she durst say she was very stupid, indeed she had no doubt she was, for her own children almost as much as told her so, every day of her life; to be sure she was a little older than they, and perhaps some foolish people might think she ought reasonably to know best. However, no doubt she was wrong; of course she was; she always was, she couldn't be right, she couldn't be expected to be; so she had better not expose herself any more; and to all Kate's conciliations and concessions for an hour ensuing, the good lady gave no other replies than Oh, certainly, why did they ask her?, her opinion was of no consequence, it didn't matter what she said, with many other rejoinders of the same class. — Charles Dickens

Most of the homeschooled children I know have about the same amount of after-school peer time as the rest of the population but, obviously, without that school day together, they do spend less time with their peers. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is still open to debate. — Quinn Cummings

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. — William H Gass

I'm very hopeful that I'm not the only one who's willing to pick up the baton of freedom, because freedom is not free, and we must fight for it every day. Every one of us must fight for it, because we're fighting for our children and the next generation. — Ben Carson

You know it's a sad day when your child looks at you and asks 'Daddy, are these organic?' — Dylan Moran

I'd forced books on my kids from the day they were born and, as it turned out, it had been completely unnecessary because all of them liked to read. Or maybe they liked to read because I'd read aloud nearly every children's book in print. — Jeff Shelby

What makes Will the best father in the world to me is that he's there, not just there in a way that's traditional. The emotional support he offers his children is immeasurable. — Jada Pinkett Smith

I read that they have buried his body like a dog's - without funeral rites, without tribal wail, with no solemn song or act. That is the deed of to-day. That is the best that this generation has to give to this noble historic character, this man who in his person ends the line of aboriginal sanctities older that the religion of Christian or Jew. Very well. So let it stand for the present. But there is a generation coming that shall reverse this judgement of ours. Our children shall build monuments to those whom we stoned, and the great aboriginals whom we killed will be counted by the future American as among the historic characters of the continent. — Bill Yenne

It's really all about family, love and the children for me. I work at that every day. — Celine Dion

When we were children we were errant enough to wish to be birds for the day but there's nothing easier to lose than playfulness. — Jim Harrison

I love movies and all, but I could never imagine standing around saying lines and playing make believe all day. It's too fucking ridiculous. Also, even children and animals can technically be actors. It's not a job for a man. — A.D. Aliwat

Lee, the mistake you made is you forgot some hour, some day, we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made. While you're in that thing, sure, a sunset lasts forever almost, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last. But outside, the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons. And then let's be frank, Lee, how long can you look at a sunset? Who wants a sunset to last? Who wants perfect temperature? Who wants air smelling good always? So after awhile, who would notice? Better, for a minute or two, a sunset. After that, let's have something else. People are like that, Lee. How could you forget? — Ray Bradbury

When children do not have three square meals a day, a proper education, and at least one adult who they know loves and is committed to them, it's very unlikely they will grow up to be productive citizens of the world. — Stephanie March

Luke would always remember the day of his drowning — Alison Cooklin

Women are no longer required to be chaste or modest, to restrict their sphere of activity to the home, or even to realize their properly feminine destiny in maternity. Normative femininity [that is, the rules for being a good woman] is coming more and more to be centered on women's body - not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, more precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and its appearance. . . . The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks frequently to see if her stockings have bagged at the ankle, or who, feeling
fat, monitors everything she eats, has become, just as surely as the inmate
of Panopticon, a self-policing subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self-surveillance is a form of obedience
to patriarchy. — Rosemarie Tong

The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else's children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose. — Aberjhani

When we are fully mindful of the transience of things - an impending return home from an overseas adventure, a graduation, our child boarding the school bus for the first day of kindergarten, a close colleague changing jobs, a move to a new city - we are more likely to appreciate [be grateful for] and savor the remaining time that we do have. Although bittersweet experiences also make us sad, it is this sadness that prompts us, instead of taking it for granted, to come to appreciate the positive aspects of our vacation, colleague, or hometown; it's 'now or never.' — Sonja Lyubomirsky

The New Testament describes the characteristics of a "virtuous widow" who is qualified to receive help from believers. This woman's description seems to parallel the miraculous, poured-out life portrayed by the Proverbs 31 woman. She does not live for her own pleasure but is well reported for good works, bringing up children, lodging strangers, washing the saints' feet, relieving the afflicted, and diligently following every good work. How does she accomplish all of this? "She trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day" (1 Timothy 5:5-6,10). She lives a supernatural existence, accomplishing incredible things without stress and exhaustion because she makes prayer the foundation of her life. — Leslie Ludy