Raising Children--Quotes

I've got some inspiring quotes about children today. As I scoured the internet looking these up, I found lots more to share. So I'll have others coming over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

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“Whatever they grow up to be, they are still our children, and the one most important of all the things we can give to them is unconditional love. Not a love that depends on anything at all except that they are our children.”
Rosaleen Dickson

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.” 
Dr. Haim Ginott

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them”
Oscar Wilde

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas”
Anonymous

"Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future”
John F. Kennedy

"Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision."
Aldous Huxley

"The best way to keep children home is to make the home a pleasant atmosphere--and let the air out of the tires."
Dorothy Parker

"It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows."
Erma Bombeck
"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
Rabindranath Tagore

"The people hardest to convince they're at the retirement age are children at bedtime."
Shannon Fife
"Children spell "love," T-I-M-E."
Dr Anthony P Whitman
"Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family."
George Bernard Shaw

Celebrating Independance Day: Quotes from the Founding Fathers

 As we look forward to celebrating Independence Day, I thought I'd share some patriotic quotes from our nation's founders.

"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  John Adams

"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right" Thomas Jefferson

"Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God?  Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." Patrick Henry

"We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."  James Madison

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."  Thomas Jefferson

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." Thomas Jefferson


"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." Patrick Henry

 "I never ... believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man." Thomas Jefferson

"There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent an sudden usurpation." James Madison

May you all have a wonderful Independence Day! And may you rejoice in the liberties granted to us first by God and second by our Great Nation. I'll be taking the rest of the week off from blogging, but look forward to seeing you again on Monday.

Reading to Children--Quotes

I have quotes to share today, some from rather famous writers and celebrities, about reading to children. Enjoy!

"So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall."
— Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
— J. K. Rowling

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."
— Emilie Buchwald

"Teaching reading IS rocket science."
— Louisa Moats

"Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different."
— Steven Pinker

"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today."
— Gabriela Mistral

"Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read."
— Marilyn Jager Adams

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."
— Jacqueline Kennedy

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet."
— Lady Montagu, providing advice on raising her granddaughter, 1752

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go."
— Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
— Austin Phelps

"You may have tangible wealth untold. / Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. / Richer than I you can never be – / I had a mother who read to me."
— Strickland Gillilan

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

If that's not encouragement to read to your children, I don't know what is.

Side note: I'm also blogging today over at Regency Reflections, where I'm sharing a review of a simply wonderful novel I read over the weekend, Heart's Safe Passage by Laurie Alice Eakes. Stop by if you have a chance.