"These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless". - George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
"Every time a child says, `I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead." - James M. Barrie - Peter Pan
"You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." - James M. Barrie - Peter Pan
"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children." - Sir Conan Doyle - The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
" It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience ". . . - George Gissing - The private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.
There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. - George Eliot - Adam Bede
Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. - George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
"Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can." - Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still." - Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. - Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
"That's the way we all begin," said Tom Platt. "The boys they make believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein' men, an' so till they die - pretendin' an' pretendin' " - Rudyard Kipling - Captains Courageous
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. - William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Children hallow small things. A child is a priest of the ordinary, fulfilling a sacred office that absolutely no one else can fill. The simplest gesture, the ephemeral movement, the commonest object all become precious beyond words when touched, noticed, lived by one's own dear child. - Mike Mason - The Mystery of Children
