Quotes

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Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next
It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?
A child learns to discard his ideals, whereas a grown-up never wears out his short pants
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them
Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision
A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them
Childhood is the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age
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