Quotes & Sayings About The Love You Have For Your Child

Daughter, I want you to form the most intense, loving relationship with yourself. Only then will you realize your capacity for kindness and emotional expansiveness. Daughter, after you have formed this relationship with yourself, I want you to love others with the openness and humility that you always embodied as a child. Daughter, I want you to forgive easily, laugh loudly and never allow yourself to become the invisible, silent woman that your mother was. Daughter, this is how we soften our hearts and become better human beings. — Diriye Osman

Think of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world - there I am a child - there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance - I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating a little child - Some think me middling, others silly, other foolish - every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in thruth it is with my will - I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so graet a resource. This is one great reason why they like me so; because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipese from a certain tact one who is reckoned to be a good Poet - I hope I am not here playing tricks 'to make the angels weep': I think not: for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical: my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled - Enough of this - though in your Love for me you will not think it enough. — John Keats

If a child sees something in a parent that the child aspires to, he or she will copy that parent and be content. If a children feel that a parent is living a life that shows compassion and understanding, patience and love, that child will not have to reach a stage of rebellion against that parent. Why rebel against someone who has listened to you and wants to help you fufill your dreams? A parent who has proven time and again that growth and happiness of his or her children is priority number one does not have to worry about where these children are heading in life. They will be sensitive and productive members of society for as long as they live. — Alice Ozma

I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness, and other days I see it as a disease, a proliferation as dangerous as cancer. My first concept about people around me was that all of them were coordinated into a WHOLE, whereas I was made up of multiple selves, of fragments. I know that I was upset as a child to discover that we had only one life. It seems to me that I wanted to compensate for this by multiplying experience. Or perhaps it always seems like this when you follow all your impulses and they take you in different directions. In any case, when I was happy, always at the beginning of a love, euphoric, I felt I was gifted for living many lives fully. It was only when I was in trouble, lost in a maze, stifled by complications and paradoxes that I was haunted or that I spoke of my "madness," but I meant the madness of the poets. — Anais Nin

Nicole's door opened, and she stomped down the hall. "I have something to say," she said, giving him the Slitty Eyes of Death. "You're totally unfair, and if I run away, you shouldn't be surprised." "Don't make me put a computer chip in your ear," Liam answered. "It's not funny! I hate you." "Well, I love you, even if you did ruin my life by turning into a teenager," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Did you study for your test?" "Yes." "Good." He looked at his daughter - so much like Emma, way too pretty. Why weren't there convent schools anymore? Or chastity belts? "Want some supper? I saved your plate." She rolled her eyes with all the melodrama a teenager could muster. "Fine. I may as well become a fat pig since I can't ever go on a date." "That's my girl," he said and, grinning, got up to heat up her dinner. — Kristan Higgins

I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, 'I'm not oblivious to you - that is, you can still hurt my feelings - but I can't stand having you around.' Who wants to be loved like that? Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I wonder if wouldn't have been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, 'I like you.' I wonder if just enjoying your kid's company isn't more important. — Lionel Shriver

The one piece of advice I always give is this: become a foster parent because you want to help the child. Not because you expect the child to think of you as their mother or father. Or to love you for the rest of their lives. They might never love you. But you have to do the very best you can for them at all times, no matter what. Fostering is one of the few jobs where your ultimate goal is not to be needed anymore. — Rio Hogarty

Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenceless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Why not start figuring out ways to change the way we treat each other? The way we talk to each other, the way we talk about each other. To love each other. You know it starts off with self-love. We have to love ourselves before we can love anybody else.

And the media from day one, from when you were little ass kids, they teach you not to love yourself. They take something out of you and they try to sell it back to you...Something that you've been fighting for your entire life that's taken from you as a child. That you always had inside of you. That's self-love.

That's why I love you so much, cause as everybody knows, I love me so much. — Kanye West

How silly of us to think we can hide from God. How insane of us to think our thoughts are private, don't you know that nothing is hidden? And what is it that you are hiding from anyway, your light, the love that you are? Are you afraid of remembering that you are a Child of God? That you are whole and holy, what a beautiful golden being of Light you are my child. There is nothing you see in this world that is as beautiful and brilliant as you, the most beautiful sunset, or sunrise is nothing in comparison to you. I have one thought and that is for you to remember who you are, where you are and how much you are LOVED. -God — Sharon Kay Casey

It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child
a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem
and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium
when one child needs you more than the others
that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.
All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side. — Jodi Picoult

He sighed. "You've chosen poorly, you know. When we return to England you'll be celebrated, just as I will be. If you've decided to abandon me, you might have netted someone titled, someone with enough wealth to see you esteemed and me able to continue my botanical studies. That would have been the aim of a dutiful daughter."
"I'm not abandoning you, and I chose Shaw. You're the one who declined to attend your daughter's wedding."
"You never used to speak to me like this. A dutiful child would never have accepted a proposal from the first man who asked, simply because he did ask."
"He didn't propose to me. I proposed to him."
Finally he looked more surprised than angry and frustrated. "You proposed to him?"
"Yes, because I didn't think he believed me when I said that I loved him. I can hardly blame him, since I had to think about it for an entire day after he said it to me, but I do love him. More than I can articulate to you. — Suzanne Enoch

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

Have never been one of those people - I know you aren't, either - who feels that the love one has for a child is somehow a superior love, one more meaningful, more significant, and grander than any other. I didn't feel that before Jacob, and I didn't feel that after. But it is a singular love, because it is a love whose foundation is not physical attraction, or pleasure, or intellect, but fear. You have never known fear until you have a child, and maybe that is what tricks us into thinking that it is more magnificent, because the fear itself is more magnificent. Every day, your first thought is not "I love him" but "How is he?" The world, overnight, rearranges itself into an obstacle course of terrors. I would hold him in my arms and wait to cross the street and would think how absurd it was that my child, that any child, could expect to survive this life. — Hanya Yanagihara

A couple of years ago, I read the findings of a study on the effects of divorced and separated parents talking negatively about their exes in the presence of their children. What I remember about the study most vividly is really just one thing: that it's devastating for a child to hear one parent speak ill of the other. In fact, so much so that the researchers found it was less psychologically damaging if a parent said directly to the child "You are a worthless piece of shit" than it was for a parent to say "Your mother/father is a worthless piece of shit."
I don't remember if they had any theories about why that was so, but it made sense to me. I think we all have something sturdier inside of us that rears up when we're being attacked that we simply can't call upon when someone we love is being attacked, especially if that someone is our parent, half of us-the primal other- and the person doing the attacking is the other half, the other primal other. — Cheryl Strayed

Paul scooted forward a bit. "Well, it's no secret I'm in love with your daughter. I want to marry Vanni. Do I have your blessing? Your permission?"
Walt shook his head and chuckled. "Haggerty, you sneak down the hall after I'm in bed every night
you'd damn sure better marry her. In fact, it might make sense for you to put the baby in that bedroom you're not using
save a trip or two, let the child have some space ... "
Paul felt a stain creep to his cheeks and thought, I'm over thirty-five
how the hell does this man make me blush? "Yes, sir. Good idea, sir. — Robyn Carr

I've thought that perhaps that's why women are so often sad, once the child's born," she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. "Ye think of them while ye talk, and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they're born, and they're different - not the way ye thought of them inside, at all. And ye love them, o' course, and get to know them they way they are ... but still, there's the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it's the grievin' for the child unborn that ye feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms. — Diana Gabaldon

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs. — Tim Kreider

The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you got born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. — Robert Penn Warren

Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. — Margery Williams

Your disrespect for me is apparent. You never respected me when I think about it and you never liked me. But I'm the parent and you're the child and it is not your job to love me the way I love you. My love for you is unconditional and no matter what you decide in your life I will love you. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but I will always love you. Love, Dad — Janet Mock

I think as a child you know when it's time for your parents to split. You realise they love each other, but they're not in love with each other. And I think as a child it's much better for your parents to split than for them to stay and have dysfunction within the family. — Abbie Cornish

The love you have for your child is so much greater than any challenge you'll face as a parent, and that's what helps you through. — Hilary Duff

Parents who have fought fiercely for the rights of their much-loved Gay and Lesbian children should not have to worry that their children will be treated differently. As a mother, I can tell you that there is no prouder moment than watching your children grow up, fall in love, and commit to that love in front of their families and friends. I want that same joy for every parent and every child. — Christine Gregoire

She was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs. Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs. Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words.
My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brought you here if there was no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it. Your father needs help, he needs courage, and for his children he may be able to do what he cannot do for himself. — Madeleine L'Engle

To ask any parent to suffer the loss of a child is to ask more than any parent can possibly give. But to deny any individual the right to walk the path they have chosen, because we cannot imagine our lives without them, carries a heavy price. You have never known this because you have never faced this choice. You've never had to sacrifice anything, because of your power to alter reality to suit your whims. I understand this truth. We mortals have tried to soften it in platitudes. 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' 'Death before dishonor.' In the end, nothing makes it easier to accept. I've given my life once for those I love, and I'm about to do it again. To have made any other choice was to grant fear dominion. Your son is a remarkable individual. Don't ask him to be less than he is. He has made his choice. — Kirsten Beyer

Making a film is like raising a child. You have to be there every step of the way, guide it, provide for it, and finally let it go into the real world and hope you have done a good job. If you don't absolutely love your film then you will loss interest in it and the movie will suffer. — Nicholas Ozeki

To pastors and teachers
Compose catechisms particularly to teach prayer, not by reasoning nor by method, for the simple are incapable thereof; but to teach the prayer of the heart, not of the understanding; the prayer of God's Spirit, not of man's invention.
Alas! By wanting them to pray in elaborate forms ... you create their chief obstacles. The children have been led astray from the best of fathers, by your endeavouring to teach them too refined, too polished a language ...
A father is much better pleased with an address which love and respect in the child throws into disorder, because he knows it proceeds from the heart, than by a formal and barren harangue, though ever so elaborate in the composition. The simple and undisguised emotions of filial love are infinitely more expressive than all language and all reasoning. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

The duty of the moment is what you should be doing at any given time, in whatever place God has put you.
You may not have Christ in a homeless person at your door, but you may have a little child.
If you have a child, your duty of the moment may be to change a dirty diaper.
So you do it.
But you don't just change that diaper, you change it to the best of your ability, with great love for both God and that child ...
There are all kinds of good Catholic things you can do, but whatever they are, you have to realize that there is always the duty of the moment to be done.
And it must be done, because the duty of the moment is the duty of God. — Catherine De Hueck Doherty

You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. — C.S. Lewis

You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years. — Marilynne Robinson

How different the world would be if each parent could say to the child: "Who you are is terrific, all you are meant to be. And who you are, as you are, is loved by all of us. You have a source within, which is the soul, and it will express itself to you through what we call desire. Always respect the well-being of the other, but live your own journey, serve that desire, risk being that which wishes to enter the world through you, and you will always have our love, even if your path takes you away from us." Such persons would then have a powerful tool to enable them to change their lives when it was not working out for them. Such persons would be able to make difficult decisions, mindful always of the impact on others, but also determined to live the life intended by the gods who brought us here. — James Hollis

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing that you are a child of God.
Let this presence settle into our bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, danse, praise and love.
It is there for each and everyone of you. — Teresa Of Avila

If you imagine that I have the smallest desire to receive your hand as a reward for having performed a difficult task to your satisfaction you're beside the bridge, my child! I've no fancy for a reluctant wife. I want your love, not your gratitude. — Georgette Heyer

I knew you had taste. Though your lack of hat is rather shocking."
"Oh, fie on this country and its inordinate affection for hats. I would sooner love every child alive than I would wear a hat. My head is perfectly covered by my hair."
"But the sun! We Albens have a terrible fear of letting it touch more of our bodies than absolutely necessary."
"Which would explain the dour and listless spirit that pervades this country. Perhaps if you gave the sun a bit more attention, it would be flattered and come out more often. — Kiersten White

You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you. — Jodi Picoult

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it. — Charlie Kaufman

There's love for your parents, your family, your spouse, your partner, your friends, but the nature of the connection you have with your child, there's nothing like it. It has its own character and it's so serious and so powerful, and so it's a prism through which I see everything. — Annette Bening

If you have people who treat you badly in your life, they will be a human shield against people who will treat you well. If that's not true then we should apply it to marriage and start saying to woman who are being put down or beaten, "you gotta stay with him because he needs you and he has been your husband for 20 years for heaven sakes. You just have to work to love him more and so on." This is the advice they gave to woman like 200 fucking years ago and it was abusive advice.
I view the parent child relationship (This just not my made up perspective.) it is the least voluntary relationship. At least the woman who got married chose to get married. We don't choose our parents. The highest standards of behavior are required for parents and no one else. There is no one else whose standards of behavior need be higher than parents and so often parents get away with the lowest possible standards of behavior with regards to their children. — Stefan Molyneux

You can deny it. But I have been with you, in every way that matters. As you have been with me. We've shared our thoughts and our food, bound each other's wounds, slept close when the warmth of our bodies was all we had left to share. Your tears have fallen on my face, and my blood has been on your hands. You've carried me when I was dead, and I carried you when I did not even recognize you. You've breathed my breath for me, sheltered me inside your own body. So, yes, Fitz, in every way that matters, I've been with you. We've shared the stuff of our beings. Just as a captain does with her liveship. Just as a dragon does with his Elderling. We've been together in so many ways that we have mingled. So close have we been that when you made love to your Molly, she begat our child. Yours. Mine. Molly's. A little Buck girl with a wild streak of White in her. Oh, gods. Such — Robin Hobb

Love is like this small room where a child brings you to show you all their treasures. First the child shows you all the new toys that are bright and shiny and top of the line. But then she shows you all the stuff that has ended up at the bottom of the trunk. There are dolls with eyes that wobble, hair that is falling out of their heads, and dirt behind their ears. Their fingertips have been chewed off by dogs and they have been drawn on with ballpoint pen. It has been so long since they have been held or anyone has told them that they are lovely. They lie at the bottom of the toy chest, hidden and ashamed. You are either going to be disgusted by them, or you are going to be so filled with love for them that your heart almost breaks.
I took his hand in mine. — Heather O'Neill

I think love is sort of a con you play on yourself. I think the whole conception of love is something the previous generation invents to justify having created you. You know I think the real reason children are born is because parents are so bored they have children to amuse themselves. They're so bored they don't have anything else to do so they have a child because that will keep them busy for a while. Then to justify to the kid the reason he exists they tell him there's such a thing as love and that's where you come from because me and your daddy or me and your mommy were in love and that's why you exist. When actually it was because they were bored out of their minds. — Richard Hell

My dear child,' said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Oliver's sudden appeal, 'you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.'
I never, never will, sir,' interposed Oliver.
I hope not,' rejoined the old gentleman; 'I do not think you ever will. I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it should refine our nature. — Charles Dickens

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The thing you have to remember about artists...is never to trust their immediate response. Whatever the news, their reaction will be self-protective. The mask goes on, and you see only what they let you see. These creatures carry their emotions around in a violin-case, reserving their only honest expression for the public stage. In private, they turn emotion on and off at will. Never believe an artist when he weeps or declares love. It's all a grand performance. Treat their upsets as you would a child's tantrums. Console, then instruct. Show compassion when it's called for, firmness when it runs out. Give them an illusion of your love for them - but never love itself, or they will devour you. — Norman Lebrecht

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is Isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others. — Chetan Bhagat

I think the love between a child and parent is wonderful. You know, Mei ... I haven't seen my mother for over two years. I used to live with her ... but now I live with my father. I used to be sad and wonder why it happened ... but parents have a lot of things they have to deal with too. I saw how they were suffering ... and I know they both love me a lot. You can't let loneliness harden your heart. Mei, you know ... Misuzu loves you, don't you? — Bisco Hatori

But know that to serve God is nothing else than to serve your neighbor and do good to him in love, be it a child, wife, servant, enemy, friend ... If you do not find yourself among the needy and the poor, where the Gospel shows us Christ, then you may know that your faith is not right, and that you have not yet tasted of Christ's benevolence and work for you. — Martin Luther

He still went out nearly every night. I thought, is this what he's going to do when we have the baby? Have I made another terrible mistake with a man? You don't really know a man until you have a child with him. Then you see so much. Is he kind? Is he tolerant? Is he loving? Or is he immature and egotistical and selfish? When you have a child, it can go two ways with your husband: You love him even more, or you lose all respect for him. And if you lose respect, there's no way to get it back ... — Candace Bushnell

My dear little big Marianne,
... I hope that you will grow up to be a healthy, happy and strong human being. I hope you will experience the most beautiful things the world has to give... And then you must have children... And think of our evenings of discussion in bed, about all the important things of life... And think of our beautiful three weeks at the seashore - of the sunrise, and when we walked barefoot along the beach from Bansin to Uckeritz, and when I pushed you before me on the rubber float, and when we read books together. We had so many beautiful things together, my child, and you must experience them all over again, and much more besides... And be happy as often as you can - every day is precious.
My love for you shall accompany you your whole life long.

(From Rose Schlosinger to her daughter, 1943) — Karen Payne

You are blessed! God's desire is for you. And Jesus is the incarnation of God's furious longing. He is your supreme Lover. It's true. You are blessed. Your soul's winter is over. The snows are over and gone. Flowers are blooming inside of you. The season of joyful songs has come. To you. You are blessed! The love of God is folly. No one is excluded. All (really!) are called to the banquet table. Come, and be filled. You are blessed! Be-YOU-ti-full. Be you. Just be. Love supports you. You are blessed! You have learned the purpose of life: LOVE. You are blessed! You can pray like a child, and enjoy God. You are blessed! Heal, and be healed. Reclaim affirmations for the kingdom of God. Amen. Amen. Amen. — Brennan Manning

You know how the little child feels towards his father. You may have an axe in your hand, or a sword;--the child is not afraid, for he knows you are a father. He will seize hold of it and play with it as with a feather, for he can not dream of danger or fear, so long as the instrument is in his father's hand. He believes that you love him; and knows that you will not hurt him, so that even a sword in your hand awakens no fear in his bosom. So of God. You are no more afraid when God plays with the forked lightning than when he paints his bow on the vaulted sky in the stillness of approaching sunset. This is faith. It trusts God amid the storm as in the calm, assured that He is forevermore the same and always infinitely good and wise. — Anonymous

Based on my own experience, I believe the brain is as soft and malleable as bread dough when we're young. I am grateful for every class trip to the symphony I went on and curse any night I was allowed to watch The Brady Bunch, because all of it stuck. Conversely, I am now capable of forgetting entire novels that I've read, and I've been influenced not at all by books I passionately love and would kill to be influenced by. Think about this before you let your child have an iPad. — Ann Patchett

One day it just hit me. This is it. You are not in love. So either stay in it because you have a child or be brave and find the man of your dreams and marry him for real. — Brandy Norwood

So at least I could rest my soul knowing I had truly given it my all. And when my future child asks why I stopped pursuing a dream I had had for so many years, I can say with no regret, "The love I have for you and your mother is far greater than any dream. — Rico Lamoureux

When parents say, 'I wish my child did not have autism,' what they're really saying is, 'I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.' Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces. — Andrew Solomon

Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You'll inherit flaws; you'll develop new ones. And that's okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don't kill others; don't kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don't be ashamed of where you've come from, or the mistakes you've made. In blindness, love will exhume you. — Tarryn Fisher

Where are those tears in your eyes, my child?
How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing!
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
For every little trifle they blame you, my child. They are
ready to find fault for nothing.
You tore your clothes while playing-is that why they call you
untidy?
O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles
through its ragged clouds?
Take no heed of what they say to you, my child.
They make a long list of your misdeeds.
Everybody knows how you love sweet things-is that why they
call you greedy?
O, fie! What then would they call us who love you? — Rabindranath Tagore

I was an orphan in my heart. I was begging for people to love me, to approve of me, to want me. And what I learned is that when you're an orphan, even just in your heart, you can love only those who will love you back. You can love only those people who have something to offer or who can reciprocate your feelings. But as a child of God, you can be completely alone and still love people who have abandoned you. As a child of God, you can go to the people who have nothing to offer and give all of you like Jesus did for all of us. That what that smile means to me now. It means that we're all orphans until we know how much we're loved. — Brian Ivie

You know the one about the old man whose grandson is getting married? Just before the wedding, he calls the boy in for a chat. "My child," he says, "I want you to know that all marriages go through phases. At first, you and you wife will make love all the time. But then, as the children come along, you will find that you are having sex less and less. And by the time they are grown and gone, you'll be just like your grandmother and me. All you'll ever have is oral sex. I just wanted you to know how things will go." The boy looks at him, incredulous. "You and Grandma have oral sex?" "Every single night," the old man says, "and it's a perfectly natural thing. She goes into her bedroom and calls, 'Fuck you!' And I go into my bedroom and call back to her, 'No, fuck you! — A. Manette Ansay

Understanding evil as the absence of Light does not require you to become passive, or to disregard evil actions or evil behavior. If you see a child being abused, or a people being oppressed, for example, it is appropriate that you do what you can to protect the child, or to aid the people, but if there is not compassion in your heart also for those who abuse and oppress - for those who have no compassion - do you not become like them? Compassion is being moved to and by acts of the heart, to and by the energy of love. — Gary Zukav

It will be well for him if at such times he listens only to his Master's word, for other and evil advisers come with their suggestions. Despair whispers, "Lie down and die; give it all up." But God would have us put on a cheerful courage, and even in our worst times, rejoice in his love and faithfulness. Cowardice says, "Retreat; go back to the worldling's way of action; you cannot play the Christian's part, it is too difficult. Relinquish your principles." But, however much Satan may urge this course upon you, you cannot follow it if you are a child of God. His divine fiat has bid thee go from strength to strength, and so thou shalt, and neither death nor hell shall turn thee from thy course. What, if for a while thou art called to stand still, yet this is but to renew thy strength for some greater advance in due time. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets. — John Fante

Heavenly Father, Sometimes it is difficult for me to see You as You really are. By faith in the testimony of Jesus, however, I accept you as my forgiving heavenly Father. A Father who loves me with unlimited love. A Father whose patience is inexhaustible. A Father who is eager to have fellowship with me. A Father who focuses on me and my position as Your child, not on my sin. A Father who rejoices when I turn to You from my sin whether it be one single act or a season of rebellion. Expose the errors in my thinking toward You and fill me with the truth, for I know that in discovering the truth I will be set free. Amen. — Charles F. Stanley

Most of Cecilia's friends were talkers. Their voices overlapped in their desperation to tell their stories. I've always hated vegetables . . . The only vegetable my child will eat is broccoli . . . My kid loves raw carrots . . . I love raw carrots! You had to jump right in without waiting for a pause in the conversation, because otherwise you'd never get your turn. But women like Tess didn't seem to have that need to share the ordinary facts of their lives, and that made Cecilia desperate to know them. Does her kid like broccoli? she'd — Liane Moriarty

Having absolutes in our life is freeing. Parents who love their children give them rules for their protection, and God does the same for His children. As a child of God, His laws free you to move into the plans and purposes He has for you. From His Word you find out what works and what doesn't work and never will. You don't have to wander down paths that will hurt you, rob you, ruin your life, and take you far away from the fulfillment and purpose God has for you. That's why God's Word is His love letter to you. — Stormie O'martian