All Quotes By Tag: Children

“But during the Prayer of the Faithful, she gave thanks for all the babies present and for their voices, because, she said, they show us what we are; we are capricious when we wish to tell God what to do.”

“إن في مقدور الإنسان أن يخبر الطفل بكل شيء. كل شيء. وكثيراً ما أذهلتني حقيقة أن الآباء لا يعرفون عن أبنائهم إلا القليل. ليس عليهم أن يخفوا عنهم الكثير لأن الأطفال حتى الصغار منهم يدركون تماماً أن الآباء يخفون عنهم أشياء كثيرة لأنهم يرونهم أصغر من أن يفهموها! إن في إمكان الأطفال أن يقدموا النصيحة في أشد الأمور أهمية. فكيف يمكن للمرء أن يخدع هذه الطيور الصغيرة العزيزة عندما يتطلعون إليه في ثقة ولطف؟ إنني أسميهم طيوراً لأنه لا يوجد في الدنيا أجمل من الطيور”

“I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth.”

“Stories are masks of God.That’s a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother’s Grimm.Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”

“Children, like God, see only our actions.”

“Every Sunday I nudge Sam in her direction, and he walks to where she is sitting and hugs her. She smells him behind the ears, where he most smells like sweet unwashed new potatoes. This is in fact what I think God may smell like, a young child’s slightly dirty neck.”

“Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.”

“There is no experience like having children.’ That’s all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children.”

“The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue …”

“O Heavenly Children, God’s messengers are as limitless as the fish in the sea. They come in all colors, regions, languages and creeds. But their message is one and the same, don’t you see? He only wishes to unite all His children under one family tree.”

“Come, my child,” I said, trying to lead her away. “Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries.””Good-bye, poor hare!” Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.”Oh, my darling, my darling!” she moaned, over and over again. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”

“Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.”

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

“In the midst of her tears came the thought, “When people are in danger, they ask God to save them;” and, slipping down upon her knees, she said her prayer as she had never said it before, for when human help seems gone we turn to Him as naturally as lost children cry to their father, and feel sure that he will hear and answer them.”

“Children see God every day; they just don’t call it that. It’s the summer sky painted with cumulus clouds by day and sequined with a million stars by night. It’s the sweet whispers of sweet gum trees and the sounds riding the tops of honeysuckle-scented breezes. Children feel God stuffed into brown fluffy dogs with stitches strong enough to withstand a good squeeze, and on the lips of round women who can’t get enough sugar from Chocolate.I began to believe that God is us and nature, beauty and love, mystery and majesty, everything right and good.”