A Quote by C. S. Lewis

A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow "for company." Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless.

C. S. Lewis

Quote Topics

Adult Adults Affection Because Calls Child Children Comfort Company Demand Fellow His Horrible Least Life Most Mother Nor Ordinary Ordinary Life Selfish Selfless Thing Those Turns Whether

Quote Author

C. S. Lewis
British - Writer
November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963

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.

Marie Winn

Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.

George Bernard Shaw

When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.

Robert Bly

You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience.

Jodi Picoult

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Emile Durkheim

You may readily judge whether you are a child of God or a hypocrite by seeing in what direction your soul turns in seasons of severe trial. The hypocrite flies to the world and finds a sort of comfort there. But the child of God runs to his Father and expects consolation only from the Lord's hand.

Charles Spurgeon

Children, it should be repeated, are not pocket editions of adults, because childhood is a period of physical growth and development, a period of preparation for adult responsibility and public and private life. A program of children cannot be merely an adaptation of the program for adults, nor should it be curtailed during periods of depression or emergency expansion of other programs.

Grace Abbott

He wove those three threads into a talk ranging from annually spending a week at Halloween as a child collecting candy to giving candy to hundreds of children at Halloween as an adult; from childhood assistance he received from adults, particularly after his parents divorced, to saying I challenge you to be a caring adult in someone's life ... Great times call forth great leaders.

Thomas Jefferson

There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

Phillips Brooks

Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

Bertrand Russell

To outlive one's child is a terrible thing, but to do so because your child has taken his or her life is horrible.

Pierre Salinger

A child is not an adult, a child didn't ask to be here. Any man that doesn't take care of his responsibilities to his family and to his children, do me a favor STOP calling yourself a man..at least have the decency to admit that you're a boy. You don't know what manhood is.

Stephen A. Smith

As in the natural life a child must have a father and a mother, so in the supernatural life of grace a true child of the Church must have God for his Father and Mary for his mother. If he prides himself on having God for his Father but does not give to Mary the tender affection of a true child, he is an impostor and his father is the devil.

Louis de Montfort

A child is an eager observer and is particularly attracted by the actions of the adults and wants to imitate them. In this regard an adult can have a kind of mission. He can be an inspiration for the child's actions, a kind of open book wherein a child can learn how to direct his own movements. But an adult, if he is to afford proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars.

Maria Montessori

A child identifies his parents with God, whether or not the adults want that role. Most children 'see' God the way they perceive their earthly fathers.