•“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” 
― James Baldwin

•“Being a parent is a gift, one which most men unselfishly allow women to keep all to themselves.” 
― Jarod Kintz

•“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” 
― Umberto Eco

•“We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up.” 
― Phyllis Diller

•“we (modern society) make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” 
― C.S. Lewis

•“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” 
― Emilie Buchwald

•“Yes, having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit. ” 

•“To be in your children's memories tomorrow, You have to be in their lives today.” 
― Barbara Johnson

•“The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.  The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.” 

•“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.” 
― Dorothy Parker

•“It's not only children who grow.  Parents do too.  As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours.  I can't tell my children to reach for the sun.  All I can do is reach for it, myself. ”

•“Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach.” 
― Arnold H. Glasow

•“I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.” 
― Anne Lamott

•“A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.” 
― Frank A. Clark 

•“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.” 
― Haruki Murakami

•“When a man dies, if he can pass enthusiasm along to his children, he has left them an estate of incalculable value.” 
― Thomas Edison

•“The love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.” 
― Louisa May Alcott

•“If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.”

•“If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.” 
― Bette Davis

•“The Golden Rule of Parenting is; do unto your children as you wish your parents had done unto you ” 
― Louise Hart 

•“My mom used to say it doesn't matter how many kids you have... because one kid'll take up 100% of your time so more kids can't possibly take up more than 100% of your time.” 

•“No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.” 
― Bill Cosby

•“Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.” 
― Laura Schlessinger 

•“If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.” 
― Jane Clayson Johnson

•“Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach.” 
― Arnold H. Glasow

•“Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” 

•“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.” 
― Peter De Vries

•“I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way.” 
― Joe Hill

•“Teaching our children to live a quiet, sane, and balanced life is one of the most important parental tasks of our day.” 
― Brent L. Top

•“Raising teenage sons and daughters is a long and tiresome journey. With God's help the final outcome will be worthwhile.” 
― Ana Monnar

•“No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you've got, say "Oh, my gosh," and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It's not a question of choice.” 
― Marisa de los Santos

•“Studies show that children best flourish when one mom and one dad are there to raise them.” 
― John Boehner 

•“Mother is a verb. It's something you do. Not just who you are.” 
― Cheryl Lacey Donovan

•“If our children were to grow up truthful they much be taught by those who had a regard for truth; and not just a casual regard, a delicate regard. On this point we were adamant.” 
― Amy Wilson-Carmichael

•“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” 
― Franklin P. Adams

•“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” 

•“To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.” 
― Josh Billings

•“It is a violation of trust to use your kids as caulking for the cracks in you.” 
― Anne Lamott

•“Independence isn't doing your own thing; it's doing the right thing on your own.” 
― Kim John Payne

•“If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued.” 
― John Holt

•“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.” 
― Robert A. Heinlein

•“The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.” 
― Karen Maezen Miller

•“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”
― Franklin P. Jones 

•“Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.” 
― John Wilmot

•“I had no idea that mothering my own child would be so healing to my own sadness from my childhood.”
― Susie Bright 

•“I know it is hard for you young mothers to believe that almost before you can turn around the children will be gone and you will be alone with your husband. You had better be sure you are developing the kind of love and friendship that will be delightful and enduring. Let the children learn from your attitude that he is important. Encourage him. Be kind. It is a rough world, and he, like everyone else, is fighting to survive. Be cheerful. Don't be a whiner.” 
― Marjorie Pay Hinckley

•“If we fail to provide boys with pro-social models of the transition to adulthood, they may construct their own. In some cases, gang initiation rituals, street racing, and random violence may be the result.” 
― Leonard Sax

•“As parents, we guide by our unspoken example.  It is only when we're talking to them that our kids aren't listening.” 

•“Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.” 
― Benjamin Franklin

•“Praise your children openly, reprove them secretly.” 
― William Cecil

•“We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.” 
― Henry Ward Beecher 

•“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.” 
― Ursula Hegi

•“There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.” 
― Marianne Williamson

•“We all need a cheering committee and parents are a child's most important fans!” 
― Vivian Kirkfield

•“Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?” 
― Betty Friedan

•“If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.” 
― Bette Davis

•“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.” 
― Kahlil Gibran

•“Even though you can't control outcomes for your child, you can parent unconditionally with all your heart.” 
― Lisa Coyne

•“If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.” 

•“What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” 
― Nicholas Sparks

•“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” 
― James A. Baldwin

•“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” 
― Bill Ayers

•“There's really no point in having children if you're not going to be home enough to father them.” 
― Anthony Edwards 

•“You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any.” 
― Bill Cosby 

•“We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.” 
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

•“I'm beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step.” 
― Sandra Steingraber

•“Character is largely caught, and the father and the home should be the great sources of character infection.”  

•“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” 
― Anne Frank