Child Refugee Quotes

The humiliation was hard to bear. Many of the faces I saw spoke of the same thing. In their own countries, these people had power, even the respect of their communities. Here in the Jungle we were barely human. We were the beasts that gave this place its name.
I imagined myself running up to some high-ranking French official and shaking them to demand answers. It wasn't my fault I wasn't born in Europe. My home was a war zone - did that somehow make me less human? ~ Gulwali Passarlay

You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom? ~ Michael Gove

What it has meant to stay alive when my daughter did not. What it has meant to suffer a heartbeat after carrying the weight and form of her inside my body, wedged just beneath that fist-shaped muscle. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Could there be irony crueler than this? How, upon his rescue, the truth had brought him here, to a house for the mad, for only a madman believes what every child knows to be true: There are monsters that lie in wait under our beds. ~ Rick Yancey

those glasses aren't for the sun they're for darkness, exclaims Rue. Sometimes when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot. They killed a boy for taking these/ I say Yes. and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean he still acted like a three year old. He just wanted the glasses to play with, says Rue. Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can't imagine the peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There's a little girl, one of greasy sae's gradkids, who wanders around the Hob. She's not quite right but she's treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things. ~ Suzanne Collins

Being the best possible role model for your child, is close to godliness ~ Thabiso Daniel Monkoe

The undisciplined child enters into discipline by working in the company of others; not being told he is naughty." "Discipline is, therefore, primarily a learning experience and less a punitive experience if appropriately dealt with. ~ Maria Montessori

There is no greater warrior than a mother protecting her child. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Writing for children, you do bear a responsibility to not include overt or graphic adult content that they are not ready for and don't need, or to address adult concepts or themes from an oblique angle or a child's limited viewpoint, with appropriate context, without being graphic or distressing. ~ Garth Nix

I think New York is a really wonderful place to raise a child. There's so much available, and so much diversity and culture, lots of things to see and do. My whole family is here. ~ Ana Ortiz

God sees you not only as a mortal being on a small planet who lives for a brief season - He sees you as His child. He sees you as the being you are capable and designed to become. He wants you to know that you matter to Him. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta's child could be safe. ~ Suzanne Collins

I knew that I was the least-loved child because I was a girl and because my mother had died giving birth to me. ~ Adeline Yen Mah

Thus if we know a child has had sufficient opportunity to observe and acquire a behavioral sequence, and we know he is physically capable of performing the act but does not do so, then it is reasonable to assume that it is motivation which is lacking. The appropriate countermeasure then involves increasing the subjective value of the desired act relative to any competing response tendencies he might have, rather than having the model senselessly repeat an already redundant sequence of behavior. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation. ~ Alice Miller

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter ... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country. ~ PJ Harvey

The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to the cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses. If one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all this fits together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this knowledge. (Chaos, Wonder and the Spiritual Adventure of Parenting anthology) ~ Barry Lopez

In that latitude the temperature flirted with a hundred degrees for a few of the dog days, but to a child it can hardly ever be too hot. I liked the sun licking the backs of my legs, and the sweat between my shoulder blades, and the violet evenings, with ice cream and fireflies, wherein the long day slowly cooled. I liked the ants piling up dirt like coffee grounds between the bricks of our front walk, and the milkweed spittle in the vacant lot next door. I liked the freedom of shorts, sneakers, and striped T-shirt, with freckles and a short hot-weather haircut.
We love easily in summer, perhaps, because we love our summer selves. ~ John Updike

He was the kind of teacher every child hated, and they suspected most of the staff did not like him too. ~ Jay Haughton

The rural children who could, usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage. Even ~ Harper Lee

To pastors and teachers
Compose catechisms particularly to teach prayer, not by reasoning nor by method, for the simple are incapable thereof; but to teach the prayer of the heart, not of the understanding; the prayer of God's Spirit, not of man's invention.
Alas! By wanting them to pray in elaborate forms ... you create their chief obstacles. The children have been led astray from the best of fathers, by your endeavouring to teach them too refined, too polished a language ...
A father is much better pleased with an address which love and respect in the child throws into disorder, because he knows it proceeds from the heart, than by a formal and barren harangue, though ever so elaborate in the composition. The simple and undisguised emotions of filial love are infinitely more expressive than all language and all reasoning. ~ Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

When I first had a child, I really had a hard time trying to figure out how it was all going to fit together. Because I felt like, when I was with him, I wanted to be writing and I should be writing. And when I was writing, I felt like I should be with him, and wanted to be with him. So I was unhappy a lot. ~ Jennifer Egan

But what is [the] quality of originality? It is very hard to define or specify. Indeed, to define originality would in itself be a contradiction, since whatever action can be defined in this way must evidently henceforth be unoriginal. Perhaps, then, it will be best to hint at it obliquely and by indirection, rather than to try to assert positively what it is.

One prerequisite for originality is clearly that a person shall not be inclined to impose his preconceptions on the fact as he sees it. Rather, he must be able to learn something new, even if this means that the ideas and notions that are comfortable or dear to him may be overturned.

But the ability to learn in this way is a principle common to the whole of humanity. Thus it is well known that a child learns to walk, to talk, and to know his way around the world just by trying something out and seeing what happens, then modifying what he does (or thinks) in accordance with what has actually happened. In this way, he spends his first few years in a wonderfully creative way, discovering all sorts of things that are new to him, and this leads people to look back on childhood as a kind of lost paradise. As the child grows older, however, learning takes on a narrower meaning. In school, he learns by repetition to accumulate knowledge, so as to please the teacher and pass examinations. At work, he learns in a similar way, so as to make a living, or for some other utilitarian purpose, and not mainly for t ~ David Bohm

The two most challenging tasks a man can face in life is education of the heart and education of the child-every other task he contemplates in life before him pales in comparison to those two. On this path of absolute uncertainty, the descending heart will permiate the education of the mind ... An initiation rite for young heart. An initiation rite for young men. ~ Adam Kovacevic

The Government's going to pass a bill regarding schools. Well I never. Interfering gang they are, as if a parent doesn't know what's best for her own child. I don't know, I don't know! We won't be able to call our children our own just now. ~ James Hanley

I always knew that I wanted to live with books, even as a child, because we traveled a lot. Home was the book to which I came back every evening. ~ Alberto Manguel

What happens with fear is that probability doesn't matter very much. That is, once I have raised the possibility that something terrible can happen to your child, even though the possibility is remote, you may find it very difficult to think of anything else. Emotion becomes dominant. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Descansado," he tells me.
"What does that mean?"
"Descansado," Rip says. "It means 'take it easy,'" he whispers, clutching the child next to him.
"Yeah?"
"It means relax. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Children of narcissists learn that love is abuse. The narcissist teaches them that if someone displeases you, it is okay to harm them and call it love. ~ M. Wakefield

When I was a child, she'd have me wash the lettuce ten times or open walnuts by hand to make a cake. I was like, 'Mom, this is ridiculous.' But now? I run my kitchen the same way. ~ Daniel Humm

I would much rather be the trusting child of a rich Father, than a beggar at the door of worldly men. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Blame or credit, does not belong to the child alone. Parents, those who raised the child, must be given equal credit, or blame. That does not change, when the child is one, twenty or ninety years old. ~ Omar Kiam

Lift up your eyes from your books, from your past, from your hurts and look upon all people with love, because when you look into another's eyes and see innocence, you find it in yourself. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

Younger than she should have been, older than any child should ever need to be. ~ Seanan McGuire

If anyone considers this strange, or even unlikely, I can only say that the truth is something very strange, and we convince ourselves that it does not exist because we are ashamed of it, as we are of a leprous child, although in this manner the truth is not rendered less alive or less truthful. We usually beautify our thoughts and hide the vipers that slither within us. If we hide them, do they not exist? ~ Mesa Selimovic

A man stroking a dog's head means the universe is stroking the universe; a child playing with a little dog means the universe is playing with the universe! If the universe is a theatre play, then we can be sure that there is only one player: The universe itself! Everything we see is the same player! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is a beautiful moment in the bible when the prophet Elijah feels God's resence. The Scriptures say that a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart, but God was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. It was the whisper of God. Today we can hear the whisper where we least expect it; in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation. ~ Shane Claiborne

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they've never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn't a child anymore. ~ Aspen Matis

When she was older, after ten or so, she could tell she was being useful, but as a small child she was tolerated (only just, she knew) by this whirlwind of efficiency that was her mother organizing a party. Still she insisted on arranging fruit on a dish, or disposing ashtrays around the house, while her mother reduced her pace to Alice's. At least while "helping," Alice did not feel quite so much as if she were a tiny creature on top of a great wave, frantically and hopelessly signalling to her mother, who stood indifferently on the shore, not noticing her. ~ Doris Lessing

I go to the dentist every six months, I get a cleaning, so ... I'm fortunate enough that those fluoride treatments as a child worked. Not getting any cavities. ~ Daniel Tosh

My God, thank you for bringing her. It's like a trip into the past. Hannah looks just like her. My sweet little Terri." And Vanni was reminded, not for the first time, that the loss of a child is probably the most brutal loss of all, no matter that child's age. * ~ Robyn Carr

I never understood when people would say, 'I would die for my child,' but you become so selfless. ~ Ciara

The child takes in his world as if it were food. And his world nourishes or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst. Secrets are impossible. He identifies with his surroundings and they live within him unconsciously; it is perhaps for this reason that the small child has been characterized as naturally religious. ~ Mary Caroline Richards

The first book that a child reads has a colossal impact. ~ Joan Aiken

I opened my louvres and looked at Comfort, walking in the heavy rain, crying bitterly.
I heard mom saying, Anywhere you want to go, you can, but don't come back again to this house.
Comfort was beautiful, but her stealing attributes brought reproach on her and painted her beauty with dark impressions.
I looked at her, walking barefooted on the muddy ground congested with rain water. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Mummies and dogs! You can beat 'em, kick 'em, treat 'em as shabbily as you like--they will eternally forgive you and still come back for more. Such degree of devotion is as hard to grasp as it is unshakable. Being a child, I had no comprehension of it. It embarrassed me. I regularly ran away from it; in fact, I still do. ~ Christopher Plummer

I always work with refugees and I think they are the most amazing people and it's a privilege to spend time with them, so I will always. ~ Angelina Jolie

Everyone, both big and small, can pull their weight, and ensure that the hopes and dreams of every child become realities. ~ Alma Powell