Quotes by British Authors - Page 543

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.
Neil Gaiman
Love every child without condition, listen with an open heart, get to know who they are, what they love, and follow more often than you lead.
Adele Devine
I believe that if children fall in love with wildlife they will grow up wanting to protect it.
Imogen Taylor
Her purity of spirit would never be in doubt, though she moved through a blemished world.
Ian McEwan
Having children is a lottery and you never know what you are going to draw out. Perhaps it is as well I got none.
G.B. Edwards
You will never be tougher than you are now. Children are the toughest creatures on the planet. They endure.
Katherine Rundell
Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me.
Terry Pratchett
The Art of Writing for Children is the knowledge of what is significant to them
Suzy Davies
The hard and unexpected part is the realization not just that my son is not here but that the boy he was is gone forever. I would give anything to have them both back. But of course that cannot be. Life moves on. Kids grow up and move away, and if you don't know this already, believe me, it happens faster than you can imagine.
Bill Bryson
There's no more secure investment in the next generation than your prayers for your children!
Elizabeth George
...too often it's only children and old people who speak the truth. You just have to slow down and listen.
Eve Chase
From the corners of her mouth, thick yellow goo bubbles. It matches the mess between Vesper's fingers, the slime on her chin, on her legs, the blobs that randomly pepper things, the blast radius massive, confounding
Peter Newman
It is the uninformed that willfully give their children wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation toys.
Steven Magee
Did they love me? The question is beside the point, somehow. Certainly they each spoiled me, mainly by giving me the false impression that I was entitled to attention nearly all the the time. They played. THEY were like children, if you consider that one of the things about being a child is that you are a parasite of sorts and have to brazen out self-righteously. I want. They were good at wanting and I shared much more common ground with them than with my mother when I was three or four years old.
Lorna Sage
But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from a shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before.
J.P. Delaney
The children of violently unhappy marriages, like my mother, are often hamstrung for life, but the children of happier marriages have problems too - all the worse, perhaps, because they don't have virtue on their side.
Lorna Sage
How can man put a cost on saving this planet of ours?Have we traversed so far down the road that all we care about is money and wealth?Do we honestly care about the coming generations or are we so greedy that we don't really give a damn about what happens after we leave this life behind?To all of you that read this, stop and look at your son's or daughter's. Walk to your windows and look outside and see other children playing heedless of their parent's greed and selfish ideals.It's the children who we are saving this world for.Not Us!
Anthony T.Hincks
How do you explain to a child who likes everyone in the world that adult life consists to a great extent of cutting people away?
Miranda Emmerson
It is unreasonable to expect all children to develop correctly in unnatural man-made electromagnetic radiation fields.
Steven Magee
Oh God, forgive me for the hateful thoughts, because I love them, these brutal, disarming bastards, I love them …
E.R. Braithwaite
I wondered why so many gardens around the world focused on the healing power of plants rather than their ability to kill… I felt that most children I knew would be more interested in hearing how a plant killed, how long it would take you to die if you ate it and how gruesome and painful the death might be.
Jane Percy
Six saw a caterpillar.''What kind?''Green, with purple and white zigzags.''I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar.
Natasha Pulley
Must we make battlegrounds out of our children?
Sarah Perry
All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of the temperature has been too much for his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions.For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" or "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believed that these names represented real existences, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.
Edwin A. Abbott
I realized how much it must suck to be a parent. You devote everything to your kids, who just end up growing up and disliking you. I felt bad for them briefly, but at least they had each other. In that moment I decided I wouldn't have kids. I don't think I could handle the level of betrayal I'd feel once I realized they weren't interested in me anymore.
Sara Taylor
Pamela produced placid babies. "They don't tend to turn feral until they're two," she said.
Kate Atkinson
She wished for a moment that they were all children again. It still seemed extraordinary to her, that everything had turned out the way it had.
Sarah Waters
My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.
Charles Dickens
. . . for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.
Charles Dickens
Don't waste our children's future on man's past.
Anthony T.Hincks
And yet, even while they baffled him, they aroused within his heart a feeling he had never known before. When- which was not often, but sometimes happened- they burst into tears of utter frustration or despair, their tiny disappointments seemed to him more tragic than Man’s long retreat after the loss of his Galactic Empire. That was something too huge and remote for comprehension, but the weeping of a child could pierce one to the heart.Alvin had met love in Diaspar, but now he was learning something equally precious, and without which love itself could never reach its highest fulfillment but must remain forever incomplete. He was learning tenderness.
Arthur C. Clarke
The most important question I ask myself as a parent is this. How can I best help my children be fully themselves and happy with who they are in the world, however they show up.
Lehla Eldridge
Enlarged sympathy with children was one of the chief contributions made by the Victorian English to real civilization.
George Macaulay Trevelyan
There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society.
E Nesbit
He still had the power to stagger her at timessimply the fact that he was breathing that all his organs were in their proper places that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born.
Jhumpa Lahiri
...indeed, with the Radletts, you never could tell. Why, for instance, would Victoria bellow like a bull and half kill Jassy whenever Jassy said, in a certain tone of voice, pointing her finger with a certain look, "Fancy?" I think they hardly knew why, themselves.
Nancy Mitford
Shall I confess it, Mr. Hartright? I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
Wilkie Collins
Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?
Thomas Hardy
I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!
Thomas Hardy
He liked to feel the soft little hand clasping his own fingers, so big and coarse in comparison, and happily so strong. For in the child's weakness he felt an infinite pathos; a being so entirely helpless, so utterly dependent upon others' love, standing there amid a world of cruelties, smiling and trustful.
George Gissing
It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.
George Orwell
They had always dreamed of a large family but have now realized that they would be equally blessed to have even one child.
Jane Green
I got my dad a great father's Day present. He called to say: 'Ach. Zis present is so good I now think it vas almost vorth having children.
Johann Hari
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in theirpower, which no subsequent connections can supply..
Jane Austen
Yes, but nomes aren’t hard to make,” said Dorcas. “You just need other nomes.” “You’re weird.
Terry Pratchett
Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.
Piers Anthony
We think of communication as words. But a screaming child is trying to say something. A tantrum carries a message. Hitting is communication. Sleep patterns carry a message. Even the sulky belligerence of a teen is an attempt to convey a message. Everything the child does says something to the person who is willing to take the time to listen carefully.
Christopher Page
We are the children of the earth and removed from her our spirit withers.
George Macaulay Trevelyan
Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?" when it grunted again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it any further. | So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up," she said to herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes a rather handsome pig, I think." And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, "if one only knew the right way to change them--" when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
Lewis Carroll
Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any brother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other.
Stevie Smith
How strange was the relation between parents and children! When they were small the parents doted on them, passed through agonies of apprehension at each childish ailment, and the children clung to their parents with love and adoration; a few years passed, the children grew up, and persons not of their kin were more important to their happiness than father or mother. Indifference displaced the blind and instinctive love of the past. Their meetings were a source of boredom and irritation. Distracted once at the thought of a month's separation they were able now to look forward with equanimity to being parted for years.
W Somerset Maugham
Girls say to me, very reasonably, 'why isn't it a bunch of girls? Why did you write this about a bunch of boys?' Well, my reply is I was once a little boy - I have been a brother, a father, I am going to be a grandfather. I have never been a sister, or a mother, or a grandmother. That's one answer. Another answer is of course to say that if you - as it were - scaled down human beings, scaled down society, if you land with a group of little boys, they are more ike a scaled-down version of society than a group of little girls would be. Don't ask me why, and this is a terrible thing to say because I'm going to be chased from hell to breakfast by all the women who talk about equality - this is nothing to do with equality at all. I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. But one thing you can't do with them is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilisation, of society. The other thing is - why aren't they little boys AND little girls? Well, if they'd been little boys and little girls, we being who we are, sex would have raised its lovely head, and I didn't want this to be about sex. Sex is too trivial a thing to get in with a story like this, which was about the problem of evil and the problem of how people are to live together in a society, not just as lovers or man and wife.
William Golding
Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as the way they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters.
Virginia Woolf
When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me.Jordan...I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.
Jeanette Winterson
Soeur Marie Emelie"Soeur Marie Emelieis little and very old:her eyes are onyx,and her cheeks vermilion,her apron wide and kindand cobalt blue.She comfortsgenerations and generationsof children,who are "new"at the convent school.When they are eight,they are already up to her shoulder,they grow up and go into the world,she remains,forever,always incredibly old,but incredibly never older...She has an affinity with the hens,When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,she is the only grown-up, whose tears are not frightening tears.Children can weep without shame, at her side...Soeur Marie Emelie...her apron as wide and kindas skies on a summer dayand as clean and blue.
Caryll Houselander
Mr. Crossley suddenly wondered why he was why he was worrying about the note. It was only a joke, after all. He cleared his throat. Everyone looked up hopefully. 'Somebody,' said Mr. Crossley, 'seems to have sent me a Halloween message.' And he read out the note: 'SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH.'6B thought this was splendid news. Hands shot up all over the room like a bed of beansprouts.'It's me, Mr. Crossley!''Mr. Crossley, I'm the witch!''Can I be the witch, Mr. Crossley?''Me, Mr. Crossley, me, me, me!
Diana Wynne Jones
And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol.It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheosed from the state of Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle
Dorothy L. Sayers
How is it?" I ask as we stroll towards the dressing rooms. "Working at the playground. That must be fun.""Sure, they're just adorable," she says, "For the first five minutes. And then I want to wring their adorable little necks."I stop, shocked. "I always figured you loved kids.""Yeah, no." Kayla shakes her head emphatically. "One kid, I can do, even two-- just stick them in front of a Disney movie, let them play Xbox all night. But a herd of them?" She shudders.
Abby McDonald
On the stairs he was crying so much he hardly saw where he was going - not a mad boo-hoo but wailing sheets of tears, shaken into funny groans by the bump of each step as he hurried down.
Alan Hollinghurst
They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up.
Zadie Smith