Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Children Quotations

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

What in us the women leave uncultivated, children cultivate when we retain them near us.

We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.

Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given; The dearest child of Faith is Miracle.

The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.

I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.

No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.

Miracle is the pet child of faith.

Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.

Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season. [Ger., Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.]

Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

Children, love one another, and if that is not possible-at least try to put up with one another.

The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red.

Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

One spares old people just as one spares children.

The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

There are two things parents should give their children roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).

I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy

Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.