quotes that make me (and perhaps you) smile.

Fruits of my research.
No, not really. x) found these while researching for something else.
All children related.

Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.
~Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, 1688

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.
-Clarence Darrow

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.
-George Bernard Shaw

*imagine your dad going: "don't do that, because if you do that, you'd end up like me!"*

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
-Harry S. Truman

You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.
-John J. Plomp

You can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them -- no matter how old or impressive they may be -- as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much -- we simply grow taller. O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
- Leo Rosten

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
- Mark Twain

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.
-P. J. O'Rourke

In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.
-Thomas Szasz

Boy, n.: a noise with dirt on it.
-Not Your Average Dictionary


Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
-Author Unknown

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
-Phyllis Diller

Anyone who thinks the art of conversation is dead ought to tell a child to go to bed.
-Robert Gallagher