The world was not left to us by our parents;
it was lent to us by our children.

African Proverb

Youth is a wonderful thing.
What a crime to waste it on children.

George Bernard Shaw

I advise the young to tell themselves constantly
that most often it is up to them alone.

Andre Gide

I think we need to think less--we overvalue our cognitive capabilities, without realizing just how often we complicate things much more than they need to be complicated, or we think too much and assign designs and motives to other people's actions and words that just aren't there.  Everyone's a psychoanalyst these days, thanks to poor television programs and movies, and few people are willing just to let people be people, and accept them for what they are.

We can be like kids in seeing the wonder of the trees and the flowers and the cows by the side of the road (FORGET the methane!).  We can be like kids when we see the extraordinary power and beauty of the mountains.  We can be like children when we meet other people and want to find out who they are, not what they make or what their social class is.

I'm glad there are children around, for, as much as I hate to say it, I would get incredibly bored being around adults all the time.  Adults seem rarely to want to play, to want to enjoy themselves, to want to take chances and discover new things and draw or paint without worrying what people will say about their art or their abilities.

Thanks, kids, for brightening my life.

tom walsh

Nurse's Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.

"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed
And all the hills echoed.

William Blake

The Children's Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there I will keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I went into the nursery and interrupted the monologue by saying:  "Margaret, this is a strange time for you to be talking so noisily to yourself.  You are disturbing everyone who is trying to sleep in this house.  Furthermore," I continued, "it seems to me rather foolish for you to lie there talking to yourself and laughing at your own remarks."

"Oh, Daddy," she said in that tone with which children immemorially have put parents in their proper place, "Oh, Daddy, you don't understand.  I have an awful good time with myself."

Norman Vincent Peale