Theodore Parker Quotes

But 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 a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.

I never experienced any feelings of closeness and caring from my parents.

I've overcome neglect and deprivation, abandonment and abuse.

When I was about 10 I ran away to see my father. He couldn't have cared less. He just took me back as soon as he could.

I never heard 'I love you' as a child. I never felt pretty or cared for.

My first failure was to be born a child not wanted by his father or mother, as they parted shortly after I was born.

I was in the orphanage in New Orleans until I was almost a year old. I don't think I ever got held by my mama, so that was completely and utterly traumatic. I think it was trauma from the first breath, and I think I've spent my whole life trying to heal from that trauma. So it shaped my brain.

I felt abandoned at a young age. That's where most of my anger came from, I guess.

My father left me when I was 6. My mother tried to take care of all of us on public assistance.

My dad kept me away from people who treat children wrong. It's just amazing that there is such a way to raise a person without giving them complexes. But nobody does it. They think it should be the old school. But look at the products. Wouldn't it be great if you could avoid the complexes? Then you could deal with the complexes of life.

When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit.

A child's mental health is just as important as their physical health.

Whatever things injure your eye you are anxious to remove; but things which affect your mind you defer.

Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.

No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.

The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.

Values are related to our emotions, just as we practice physical hygiene to preserve our physical health, we need to observe emotional hygiene to preserve a healthy mind and attitudes.

Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child's wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.

I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.

My daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.

My childhood was bad. No father. Mother was greedy and brought me up awful - never made me breakfast once. I don't want to get started. One story is worse than another.

Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens.

I was about six years old, still Daddy's little girl, even though Daddy couldn't care less about me. How could I expect any man every would?

Don't eat your heart.

And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?