The hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or, again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.

Carson Smith McCullers

It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.

Simone de Beauvoir

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

Roger Lewin

Childhood is short, maturity is forever.

Calvin; from, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes, p33-2

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.

Brian Aldiss

When there is not love for a child to remember, Then there is nothing for the child to remember except the hate.

Roger Dean Kiser

But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Cry of the Children

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Emma Goldman

Five is a wonderful time of life for a little kid... It is a time when the eyes are wide open and the patterns are not yet set; a time when one has not yet been hammered into accepting everything as immutable and hopeless; a time when the hands cannot do enough, the mind cannot learn enough, the world is infinite and colorful and filled with mysteries. Five is a special time before they take the questing, unquenchable, quixotic soul of the young dreamer and thrust it into dreary schoolroom boxes. A time before they take the trembling hands that want to hold everything, touch everything, figure everything out, and make them lie still on desktops. A time before people begin saying 'act your age' and 'grow up' or 'you're behaving like a baby'. It is a time of delight, of wonder, of innocence.

Harlan Ellison, "Jeffty Is Five" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July, 1977