Childhood Burden Quotes

Our mother was a very religious and observant Jew, our father less so. She was kind of driving the religious education, so for us it was more a burden and an obligation when we were kids at that age.

When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

We expect too much from our children. We exact from them a perfection which we are far from carrying out in ourselves; we require of them sacrifices much heavier, comparatively, than those of any grown-up person.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it.

Children: a torment and nothing more.

The death of Mrs. Lincoln was a serious loss to her husband and children. Abraham's sister Sarah was only eleven years old, and the tasks and cares of the little household were altogether too heavy for her years and experience.

I feel that you always pay when you are a child.

It is not always a treat to grow up as the heir to a world-famous leader.

But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also: they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded on their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace.

Children who assume adult responsibilities feel old when they're young.