Quotes & Sayings About Second Childhood

The old are in a second childhood. — Aristophanes

On Michael Jackson and child stardom: He had one of the worst childhoods ever. I think I had the second. — Elizabeth Taylor

Old age is second childhood. — Aristophanes

I promise I don't bite." He winked at her.

That earned him another throaty laugh. Then she bent over him, hands braced on his thighs, her luscious mouth inches from his. The heat of her palms singed his skin even through his jeans. Her warm breaths puffed against his lips as she stared him dead in the eye. "What if I do? — J.M. Stewart

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. — Kelly Corrigan

The baby regarded Mike gravely as she discoursed to it about a poor drowned woofum-wuffums, and did the bad man treat it badly, then. The baby belched eloquently.
"He belches in English!" I remarked.
"Did it have the windy ripples?" cooed Mike. "Give us a kiss, honey lamb."
The baby immediately flung its little arms around her neck and planted a whopper on her mouth.
"Wow!" said Mike when she got her breath. "Shorty, could you take lessons!"
"Lessons my eye," I said jealously. "Mike, that's no baby, that's some old guy in his second childhood. — Theodore Sturgeon

I believe that man must learn to live without those consolations called religious, which is own intelligence must by now have told him belong to the childhood of the race. Philosophy can really give us nothing permanent to believe either; it is too rich in answers, each canceling out the rest. The quest for Meaning is foredoomed. Human life 'means' nothing. But this is not to say that it is not worth living. What does a Debussy Arabesque 'mean,' or a rainbow or a rose? A man delights in all of these, knowing himself to be no more
a wisp of music and a haze of dreams dissolving against the sun. Man has only his own two feet to stand on, his own human trinity to see him through: Reason, Courage, and Grace. And the first plus the second equals the third. — Peter De Vries

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. — John Steinbeck

I am just making up for being far too sensible when I was young. — Robert Black

We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images ... Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child's life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory. — Selma Fraiberg

How is it then that your theologians drivel like people in their second childhood. — Martin Luther

This was a new buzz, better than anything I'd tried before. For the first time, I could fight back at others. I'd even fight with a parked car! I was totally kyboshed on these drugs, I didn't care how many boys were standing outside the pub, I'd run over and fight the lot of them. Even though I came off second best, in my mind, I still walked away a winner. I showed them I wasn't a little shit-bag that always got battered, not when I had the drugs in me. — Stephen Richards

It was only my second night in Africa, yet something had begun to grow inside me which I could not stop, as if my childhood dreams had finally found the place where they could materialize. I had arrived where I was always meant to be. I did not know how it could be practically achieved, but I was certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was here that I wanted to live. — Kuki Gallmann

She looked at me for a second and said, "Oh, never mind. I guess it's true what Mom said? That you've led a sheltered life?"
I said I thought the description fairly apt. — Susan Hubbard

There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is - the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It's too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It's been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks - the expiration date on her childhood. — Susan Wiggs

-If I somehow possessed a set of videotapes that contained all the most significant events of your childhood, in their entirety, would you want to see them?
-Absolutely. Right this very second.
-But why? Don't you think some of the tapes would be very sad?
-Most of them, yes. But if I could see them, then I could have them in my brain like regular memories-horrible memories, yes, but regular memories, not sinister little ghosts in my head that pop out of some part of me I don't even know, and take the rest of me away. Do you know what I mean?
-I think so, If you have to remeber, you'd rather do it in the front of your brain than in the back. — Martha Stout

I have been only the humblest jugglers-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence
that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disoriented, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies. — Salman Rushdie

Unable to help himself, he offered her a smile and stared into those eyes as he tapped his mouth. "I think you missed. — J.M. Stewart

You care, you really care for me!" "Of course," Eric said. "How could you doubt it?" But it was not easy to believe that anyone cared for me; I sometimes failed to realize, I think, how much my parents cared for me. It is only now, reading the letters they wrote to me when I came to America fifty years ago, that I see how deeply they did care. And perhaps how deeply many others have cared for me - was the imagined lack of caring by others a projection of something deficient or inhibited in myself? I once heard a radio program devoted to the memories and thoughts of those who, like me, had been evacuated during the Second World War, separated from their families during their earliest years. The interviewer commented on how well these people had adjusted to the painful, traumatic years of their childhood. "Yes," said one man. "But I still have trouble with the three Bs: bonding, belonging, and believing." I think this is also true, to some extent, for me. — Oliver Sacks

Parent may hinder their children's marriage; but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood. — Honore De Balzac

I glanced in the first open door and stopped short. Desks. Four tiny desks. A wall of faded posters of alphabet animals. A blackboard, still showing the ghost of numbers. I blinked, certain I was seeing wrong.
Derek nudged my legs, telling me to get moving. I looked at him, and I looked at the classroom.
This was where Derek had grown up. Four tiny desks. Four little boys. Four young werewolves.
For a second, I could see them - three boys working at the three clustered desks, Derek alone at the fourth, pushed slightly away, hunched over his work, trying to ignore the others.
Derek nudged me again, whining softly, and I looked down to see him eyeing the room, every hair on his neck on end, anxious to get away from this place. — Kelley Armstrong

I'm not one of these guys who sits around saying, 'Gee, I mean, the person had a strange childhood and that's why he's doing this horrible thing. Poor Jeffrey Dahmer. He's just had a bad childhood and that's why he's eating people.' Wait a second! This person should be removed from the planet. — Clint Eastwood

The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second. — Ingmar Bergman

If somewhere beneath the blood, the past must beat in me to make a rhythm of survival for itself - to go on as this half-life which echoes as a second pulse inside the ticking moments of my existence - if this is what must be, why is the pattern of remembered instants so uneven, so gapped and rutted and plunging and soaring? I can only believe it is because memory takes its pattern from the earliest moments of the mind, from childhood. And childhood is a most queer flame-lit and shadow-chilled time. — Ivan Doig

She is the first head of government in history to give a whole country its second childhood. — Simon Hoggart

I was born in 1953, in Paris. But soon after my birth my family (I have one sister) moved into a rent apartment in suburbs of Paris named Romainville. That time my parents were freshly married and it was extremely hard to find an apartment in Paris for a young married couple. To say they found a flat in a blocks of houses which was built after the second World War - and this is the place where I spent my childhood. — Richard Clayderman

Every person will become three time child in their life.
One when they are child, Second when they become parents and third when they become grandparents.
It's never be gone. — Savan Solanki

Put him, blindfold, into a closed room anywhere in the world, and he could tell if Sybilla was with him. It had to do, perhaps, with her scent. To him, it was more: a breath from the sweetness and peace of his childhood; a sense of light; of understanding; of loving amusement; an air from the flower-filled walls of pairidza.

Nothing, even now, took from him that first moment as he stood on her threshold. Until the second moment came, and with it his years and his memory. He closed the door, and then turned calmly and looked for her. — Dorothy Dunnett

The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe. — William Mountford

No matter how much kids beg to be treated like adults, nobody likes to let go of their childhood. You wish for it and dream of it and the second you have it, you wonder what you've done. You wonder what it is you've become. — Daniel H. Wilson

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man, youth never. — Anna Jameson

I was astonished at how wonderful these books were; and even though I was occasionally discomforted when someone, having asked me what book I had in my pocket, looked aghast when I pulled out a copy of Heidi or Finn Family Moomintroll, I soon realized that my then-present condition of "second childhood" was not one of senility and depression but of renewal and awakening. — Jonathan Cott

Awakening your spiritual self is like having a second childhood with faulty parents, broken bones and proverbial brussel sprouts. — Christopher Hawke

I learned that childhood rhyme or the dictum that demanded you scratch your head every time you heard a siren, lest the next siren be for you. But I do know when I started doing it, and now it's become second nature. Still, in a place like Manhattan, where the sirens are always blaring, it can become exhausting to keep up. — Gayle Forman

Somewhere slightly before or after the close of our second decade, we reach a momentous milestone
childhood's end. We have left asafe place and can't go home again. We have moved into a world where life isn't fair, where life is rarely what it should be. — Judith Viorst

If I wasn't doing candy, I'd want to create the best rescue animal-shelter organization. Otherwise, the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson were so much a part of my childhood, and Janet and I have become friends. So my second dream job would be backup singer for Janet Jackson! — Dylan Lauren

In childhood we inhabit a world of wonderful contrasts that later we often come to see as bizarre and do our best to rearrange, with everything in its 'proper' place. Unusual juxtapositions we label surrealistic. Yet what is surrealism but a second childhood with Freudian overtones which we have to be re-educated to enjoy? -- part of the tragedy of growing up — Ken Russell

LOVE'S BAPTISM. I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs; The name they dropped upon my face With water, in the country church, Is finished using now, And they can put it with my dolls, My childhood, and the string of spools I've finished threading too. Baptized before without the choice, But this time consciously, of grace Unto supremest name, Called to my full, the crescent dropped, Existence's whole arc filled up With one small diadem. My second rank, too small the first, Crowned, crowing on my father's breast, A half unconscious queen; But this time, adequate, erect, With will to choose or to reject. And I choose - just a throne. — Emily Dickinson

[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants
neither alcohol nor meat
are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood. — Angela Carter

I'm just having fun. And giving a sort of second shot at childhood and life - and I need to be present to do it. — Sandra Bullock

Most of the things that I remember from childhood wouldn't make a particularly good story: rescuing worms during rainstorms, our schnauzer attacking a wheel of cheese when someone dropped it during dinner, my parents tricking us into riding Space Mountain at Disney World (we thought it was an educational people-mover kind of ride), playing Star Wars (I got to marry Harrison Ford and my sister married Luke Skywalker) in first and second grade. On the other hand, we always had lots of interesting babysitters
seminary students and friends of my parents
who told really good ghost stories. — Kelly Link

If she has given you children remind yourself every day of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth words in this sentence. If you hurt her in ways that are irreparable I will send out people to hurt you back, sorry, but it has to be like that. Yes, you may have had a difficult childhood, but please allow me to introduce myself: Hello, I am the woman who doesn't give a shit. Make her something warm to drink in the mornings and give her time to begin speaking; only rush at her with an embrace or a gemstone. Wildflowers. A love note. Yeats. — Mary-Louise Parker

Though in fairness, before tonight she wouldn't have known exactly how to classify them. Sorta childhood friends through her brother, turned business rivals who had absolutely incendiary chemistry when they let it loose, which was almost never. Yeah, that wasn't unclear at all ... Sarcasm. Kady's second-favorite - asm. — Laura Kaye

I'd always had a childhood ambition to go into the investment capital business, and spent twenty-odd years in it. But the thought of spending the second half of my career in the same business was boring, so I looked around for other opportunities . — Chris Corrigan

Men's second childhood begins when a woman gets a hold of him. — James M. Barrie

When I was twelve, my sixth-grade English class went on a field trip to see Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. From that moment forward I dreamed that someday I'd meet my own Juliet. I'd marry her and I would love her with the same passion and intensity as Romeo. The fact
that their marriage lasted fewer than three days before they both were dead
didn't seem to affect my fantasy. Even if they had lived, I don't think their
relationship could have survived. Let's face it, being that emotionally aflame, sexually charged, and transcendentally eloquent every single second can really start to grate on a person's nerves. However, if I could find someone to love just a fraction of the way that Montague loved his Capulet, then marrying her would be worth it. — Annabelle Gurwitch

Conservatives tend not to want to fund early childhood education. First, they see it as a government program to be destroyed. Second, they are concerned about what would be taught - perhaps not the subject matter of what would be taught in a strict father household. They want to be sure that children are taught a conservative way of looking at the world. Children — George Lakoff

Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.
Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide. — Michio Kaku

Play with your dolls for not more than half an hour, no more than fifteen minutes, no more than a second, a millisecond. If you learned math as fast as you ran outside to play, then you might be a genius. But you do not and you are not. You're a hole where knowledge goes to sleep. — Weike Wang

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. — Colin A. Ross

As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure. When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parent's rooms are empty. Those children do not see their parents reading, as I did every day of my childhood. By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says 'PRIVATE
GROWNUPS KEEP OUT': a child sprawled on the bed, reading. — Anne Fadiman

Old age is but a second childhood. — Aristophanes

You're my best friend's kid sister, Ang. I've known you since you were eight." He ducked his head, dragged his hands through his hair with all the frustration winding through him. "Christ, if your brother finds out, he'll have my hide. — J.M. Stewart

It's always been a dream of mine, and a childhood fantasy, to play a great champion. I would much rather haven been an athlete than an actor. This is like some second place consolation prize. — Mark Wahlberg

Children come into the world with that sense of celebration and delight in the awesomeness of life. Then we eat of that wonderful, terrible fruit depicted in the story of the Garden of Eden, and our lives become divided. In childhood we have innocent wholeness, which then is transformed into informed separateness. If one is lucky, a second transformation occurs later in life, a transformation into informed wholeness. A proverb puts it this way: in life our task is to go from unconscious perfection to conscious imperfection and then to conscious perfection. — Robert A. Johnson

For 'American Born Chinese,' my first graphic novel with First Second Books, I did mostly 'memory' research. It's fiction, but I pulled heavily from my own childhood. — Gene Luen Yang

Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. — J.M. Barrie

This framing accents the importance of building a tidier system, one that incorporates the array of existing child care centers, then pushes to make their classrooms more uniform, with a socialization agenda "aligned" with the curricular content that first or second graders are expected to know. Like the common school movement, uniform indicators of quality, centralized regulation, more highly credientialed teachers are to ensure that instruction
rather than creating engaging activities for children to explore
will be delivered in more uniform ways. And the state signals to parents that this is now the appropriate way to raise one's three- or four-year-old. Modern child rearing is equated with systems building in the eyes of universal pre-kindergarten advocates
and parents hear this discourse through upbeat articles in daily newspapers, public service annoucement, and from school authorities. — Bruce Fuller

There are many accounts, uniformly incomplete, of what it is like to die slowly. But there is no information at all about what it is like to die suddenly and violently. We are being gentle when we describe such deaths as instant. 'The passengers died instantly.' Did they? It may be that some people can do it, can die instantly. The very old, because the vital powers are weak; the very young, because there is no great accretion of experience needing to be scattered. Muhammad Atta was 33. As for him (and perhaps this is true even in cases of vaporisation; perhaps this was true even for the wall-shadows of Japan), it took much longer than an instant. By the time the last second arrived, the first second seemed as far away as childhood ... Even as his flesh fried and his blood boiled, there was life, kissing its fingertips. Then it echoed out, and ended. — Martin Amis

There are four obstacles.
First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible.
The second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.
The third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path.
The fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives. — Paulo Coelho

The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood — Gerald Massey

Every child likes to take a pencil to make a mark. Everybody makes beautiful things when they are three, four, or five years old. Most people lose that spontaneity; I think that always happens. Some are able to win a second spontaneity. — Alvaro Siza