In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.
You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, with four hungry children and a crop in the field.
Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.
I believe if more American children read the Ten Commandments and are taught what they mean, they will predictably engage in less crime.
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I love romantic comedies. I love romantic movies. I'm kind of a sucker for them, and, sort of end up crying at the end of them all, like a child.
The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world - God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts - fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone, all suffering ends.
The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcherstalkerkidnapperkidnapper of women or children.
The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?
The only way to break the cycle of unwed motherhood, fatherless children, poverty, crime, and welfare is to recognize that welfare causes more problems than it cures.
Children who have learned to be comfortably dependent can become not only comfortably independent but also comfortable with having people depend on them. They can lean, stand, and be leaned upon, because they know what a good feeling it can be to feel needed.
One thing I teach my children and want everyone to know that even if you happen to be on a pedestal you should have the capacity to turn around and say, 'I don't know'. We are scared to go wrong. Downfall is part of life.
[Luke, holding stormtrooper helmet. ] Alas, poor stormtrooper, I knew ye not, yet have I taken both uniform and life From thee. What manner of a man wert thou? A man of inf'nite jest or cruelty? A man with helpmate and with children too? A man who hath his Empire serv'd with pride? A man, perhaps, who wish'd for perfect peace? What'er thou wert, goodman, thy pardon grant Unto the one who took thy place: e'en me.
Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children. To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war.
I do not think that you can try and systematize education for the whole world. I would try experiments in small communities and in schools to see how they work out, instead of taking the children of an entire nation and trying to bring them up on the same system.
That cruelty which children are permitted to show to birds and other animals will most probably exert itself on their fellow creatures when at years of maturity.
In my earliest of years, my mother was a huge force in my life. She was for all intents and purposes, a single parent. My father had abandoned us. He was an alcoholic and a physical abuser. My mother lived through that tyranny and made her living as a domestic worker. She was uneducated but she brought high principles and decent values into our existence, and she set lofty goals for herself and for her children. We were forever inspired by her strength and by her resistance to racism and to fascism.
I want to help others 'think first' before diving into a pool or lake to prevent these types of life-changing accidents. I know I'm in a very fortunate minority and hope my story inspires both adults and children to be more careful.
Children represent God's most generous gift to us.