A Quote by Norman Douglas

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things. — © Norman Douglas
If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.
Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them.
Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don't want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.
Everything I have, I owe to Jardim Irene. I want the children to see me there, that I'm giving them attention, so that they can have a good role model.
What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.
I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.
Many parents make the mistake of giving love and approval to their children only when their children do something that they want them to do.
When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
Stop giving energy to the things you don't want.
If you want your children to relate to the culture you live in, if you want to train them outside of the general system, you have to tell your children that ordinary children tend to say things like 'I can run faster than you; I can draw better than you; I know things you don't know'. You have to tell them what normal children are like. Normal children are messed up and you have to tell them about that. But if you instruct your child in high correlation with the physical world, they won't be able to relate with normal children. Normal means mixed up as I use the word.
One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters.
Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people. Every dollar we will ever earn must come from people. The person we love, and with whom we want to spend the rest of our life, is a human being with whom we must interact. Our children are individuals, each different from any other person who ever lived. And what affects them most is our attitude-the loving kindness they see and feel whenever we are around them. If you'll begin to develop and maintain an attitude that says yes to life and the world, you'll be astonished at the changes you'll see.
So long as I can stay mentally alert - inquiring, curious - I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don't want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I'm just not ready to stop, to die.
...after you stop wanting things is when having them won't make you go crazy. After you stop wanting them is when you can handle having them. Or before. But never during. If you get things when you really want them, you go crazy. Everything becomes distorted when something you really want is sitting in your lap.
I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds.
Can I tell you what I want? I want to stop wanting things I can’t have. I want to stop falling for jerks I don’t need. And I want to stop feeling like an f/ing gooey butter cake somebody left out in the rain.
You want to give your children better than what you had and make them feel like they have everything. But I think there is also a lot of value in making them work for things and allowing them to see other places.
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