Mary Balogh Quotes

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely understand.

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

When you're younger you feel more invincible - that nothing is ever going to get you down or beat you. When you get a bit older, you realise the fragility of things, how easy it is to get caught out by things - and Ant did.

Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child

I'm sure I shall always feel like a child in the wood.

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.

We’ve educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.

It is only grown-ups who want children to be children; children themselves always want to be real people.

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

It's easier to see children as mini adults than it is to imagine or to remember what it is to be a child again.

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them. Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.

In life's rich beauty pageant we put children on a stage, said flash your soft white belly child, but just don't act your age.

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.

I am a child. I am two feet tall, and asking if she loves me.

People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.

Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.

Children are naive-they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.