A Quote by Christina Stead
I do not want to go to heaven; I want my children, forever children, and other children, stalwart adults, and a good happy wife, that is all I ask, but not paradise; earth is good enough for me: it is because I believe earth is heaven, Naden, that I can overcome all my troubles and face down my enemies.
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Children are happy because they don't yet have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong." They don't have a mind-set that puts "Things to Fear" before "Things to Love." Unless we can be like little children, we can't enter into the kingdom of heaven; unless we can be like little children, we can't be happy. Children are happy because they don't have all the facts yet.
If cynicism is inevitable as one ages, so is the yearning for innocence. To children heaven is being an adult, and to adults heaven is being children again.
What's wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence... I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.
We'll tell him his mother waits for him in heaven, I suppose." "Is that a lie?" "It's what we tell fools and children." She sighed. "Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.
If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.
I prefer children because they are honest. They don't want anything from you other than to have fun. Adults have let me down. Adults have let the world down.
We cannot control what others choose to do, and so we cannot force our children to heaven, but we can determine what we will do. And we can decide that we will do all we can to bring down the powers of heaven into that family we want so much to have forever.
The Earth cannot wait 60 years. I want a future for my children and my children's children. The clock is ticking.
I didn't want tunes that preach heaven: you know, life on Earth is bad and heaven is the only hope we have. I don't quite care for that. I mean, when people sing that stuff, it's good when they do it, but I didn't want to do it.
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.
The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.
Here's the progression. Feminism won; you can have it all; of course you want children; mothers are better at raising children than fathers; of course your children come first; of course you come last; today's children need constant attention, cultivation, and adoration, or they'll become failures and hate you forever; you don't want to fail at that; it's easier for mothers to abandon their work and their dreams than for fathers; you don't want it all anymore (which is good because you can't have it all); who cares about equality, you're too tired; and whoops--here we are in 1954.
I have always thought that Heaven is a place for people who had had a good life, but that is not true. God is merciful and way too good to make it so. The Heaven is just a place for people who could not be really happy while living on Earth. I was once told that people who commit suicide are taken back on Earth to repeat life from the very beginning because if they did not like it once, it did not mean they would not like it the next time. But those who did not fit in on Earth at all, ended up here. Everyone comes to Heaven in their own way.
Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.
Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.
Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven. I want to meet you all, white and black, in Heaven. Our Federal Union! It must be preserved! [Toast at a celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday, April 13 1830]
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