Children Of The Forest Quotes

The priest explained the mysteries of the faith 'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies. ~ Mark Twain

Bran's father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off Father's face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell. There ~ George R R Martin

Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.
"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us wok dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of the earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sun our songs ten thousand years."
Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."
"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."
"Two hundred years?" said Meera.
The child smiled. "Men, they are the children. ~ George R R Martin

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. ~ George R R Martin

I worry very much about kids growing up in a society where they think: "I'm not going to talk about this issue, read this book or explore this idea because someone may think I'm a terrorist." That's not the kind of free society I want for our children. ~ Bernie Sanders

The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children. ~ George R R Martin

The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives. ~ Peter Benchley

...when President Clinton, on the anniversary of his election, spoke in the church in Tennessee where Martin Luther King, Jr., had delivered his last sermon. Inspired by the place and the occasion, he made one of the most eloquent speeches of his presidency. What would King have said, he asked, had he lived to see this day?

"He would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. This is not what I came here to do.

I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon; not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don't amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work, but not have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for."

After describing what his administration was doing to curb drugs and violence, the President concluded that the government alone could not do the job. The problem was caused by "the breakdown of the family, the community and the disappearance of jobs," and unless we "reach deep inside to the values, the spirit, the soul and the truth of human nature, none of the ~ Gertrude Himmelfarb

I rode with Genghis when I was younger than you, barely able to stay on a saddle."
"What was he like?" Zhenjin asked.
Kublai opened his eyes to find his son watching him.
"He was a man who loved his children and his people, Zhenjin. He took the Chin foot off the throat of the nation and made us look up from the struggles of tribes. He changed the world."
Zhenjin looked down, playing with a cherry twig in his hands, bending it this way and that.
"I would like to change the world," he said.
Kublai smiled, with just an edge of sadness in his eyes.
"You will, my son, you will. But no one can change it forever. ~ Conn Iggulden

As a child, I didn't know what I didn't have. I'm thankful for the challenges early on in my life because now I have a perspective on the world and kind of know what's important. ~ America Ferrera

It has been said that the essence of teaching is causing another to know. It may similarly be said that the essence of training is causing another to do. Teaching gives knowledge. Training gives skill. Teaching fills the mind. Training shapes the habits. Teaching brings to the child that which he did not have before. Training enables a child to make use of that which is already his possession. ~ Henry Clay Trumbull

A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.
A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.
A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies. ~ J. Patrick Lewis

Do you remember bedtime as a child? I was terrified of the dark. I was terrified of the closed closet door that surely cracked open when I wasn't looking and spewed out ghouls and devils. I took care that no arms or legs protruded from the bed. I sometimes slept with the covers over my head. Sweltering, panting, barely breathing. Not even my hair exposed, lest a monster discover and devour me. I remember begging my father to check under the bed. I remember trying to explain how some monsters had invisibility cloaks. He would kiss my cheek and switch off the light.

We stop looking under the bed once we realize that the monsters are inside us.

It's funny how they transform. Suddenly they don't mind daylight. Suddenly they dress nicely, speak our language, and share our customs. They sit next to us on the metro and jog around our neighborhoods. They slip things into our drinks at parties and offer us jobs. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we even do the unthinkable: we invite them to our bed. As adults, we burn down the sanctuaries we created as children. Our inner child freaks out, but its screams are drowned by our moans as our monsters bring us to orgasm. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

Kings of a bakery? The very suggestion was laughable. How easy it was to assume that elsewhere was infinitely better than where you stood. Sometimes at night, she dreamed of the TEXAS, U.S.A. magazine advertisement, envisioning a land with row upon row of fat loaves laden with jeweled fruits; bread cubes sodden with thick lamb stew; sugar-dusted sweet breads, ginger-spiced cookies, and fat wedges of chocolate cake soaked in Kirschwasser. She'd awake with cold drool down her chin. Regardless of the family's lack of resources, one of Papa's famous Black Forest cakes had miraculously prevailed. Dressed in a layer of bittersweet chocolate shavings ~ Sarah McCoy

Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight. ~ Terri Windling

Sin is wrong, not because of what it does to me, or my spouse, or child, or neighbor, but because it is an act of rebellion against the infinitely holy and majestic God. ~ Dave Harvey

This humble person has been alive long enough to see two generations of children grow up, and knows how rare it is for ordinary birds to give birth to a swan. The swan who goes on living in its parents' tree will die; this is why those who are beautiful and talented bear the burden of finding their own way into the world. ~ Arthur Golden

[S]he realized quite abruptly that this thing which took him off, which kept him out so many hours day after day, this thing that was against her own little will and instincts - was enormous as the sea. It was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed and mountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky, its scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What she knew of it hitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the winds was but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained invisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance passed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissing kettle. Out yonder - in the Forest further out - the thing that was ever roaring at the center was dreadfully increasing. ~ Algernon Blackwood

For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes. ~ Pema Chodron

If I had not lived the life I had lived and did not have the wife I have and the children I have, I would never know how to play that role [Dr. Bedsloe], and I wouldn't have any of those qualities. It's a real example of how it is true that the camera catches everything. Even the stuff you're trying to hide. ~ Kurt Fuller

Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?"
"Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful heroism and high spirits. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Fair Trade supports some of the most bio-diverse farming systems in the world. When you visit a Fair Trade coffee grower's fields, with the forest canopy overhead and the sound of migratory songbirds in the air, it feels like you're standing in the rainforest. ~ Miguel A. Altieri

I'm a firm believer the the first two tenets of effective child-rearing boil down to "spend a lot of time with your children" and "cherish them," because, one, they need you when they're growing, and, two, they're going to be up and gone before you realize it. ~ Archie Manning

Stuff happens to most people. One thing going wrong, I mean. One family member missing a chance to help. One who cuts you off. One person with her own shit to deal with. One of those things isn't enough to send you falling through the cracks. But all of them together, they accumulate. An abandoned mother here. A missing uncle there. A disappearing father 2 generations back. A friendship broken by fear or mistrust or addiction. Genes that make you vulnerable to certain problems. Two children who aren't loved right meeting up when they're not really adults yet and having 2 more children who aren't loved right. It adds up. It all adds up. ~ Sara Zarr

I once fell in love with a man only because we both belonged to that large and secret club of children who had "crazy mothers." We traded stories of the shameless houses to which we could never invite our friends. ~ Gloria Steinem

Child's evidence is always the best evidence there is. I'd rely on it every time. No good in court, of course. Children can't stand being asked direct questions. They mumble or else look idiotic and say they don't know. They're at their best when they're showing off. ~ Agatha Christie

Like all Xhosa children, I acquired knowledge mainly through observation. We were meant to learn through imitation and emulation, not through questions. When I first visited the homes of whites, I was often dumbfounded by the number and nature of questions that children asked of their parents-and their parents' unfailing willingness to answer them. In my household, questions were considered a nuisance; adults imparted information as they considered necessary. ~ Nelson Mandela

Our ancestors have much to answer for.
Why? What did they do?
... Long ago, they used machines and drugs to keep the unhealthy and unfit ones of us alive. In that past time it was believed that all persons must have children. It was a right deemed so precious that it was forced upon even those who did not value it or should not have had it. If one of our people became pregnant, our people used all their knowledge to assure the young would be born, no matter how sick or disabled. Then, if the young lived, they injected them and dosed them and radiated them and transfused and transplanted them, to keep them alive, and then, when they were grown, they used all their skills in assisting them to have children of their own. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community. ~ John Taylor Gatto

If you could start children right from the beginning with this thought, you'd see the effect it has on their lives. In fact, I did this with my own children. Again and again, I told them there was a reason why they were here, and they had to find out what that reason was for themselves. From the age of four years, they heard this. I also taught them to meditate when they were about the same age, and I told them, "I never, ever want you to worry about making a living. If you're unable to make a living when you grow up, I'll provide for you, so don't worry about that. I don't want you to focus on doing well in school. I don't want you to focus on getting the best grades or going to the best colleges. What I really want you to focus on is asking yourself how you can serve humanity, and asking yourself what your unique talents are. Because you have a unique talent that no one else has, and you have a special way of expressing that talent, and no one else has it. ~ Deepak Chopra

We need a quickening of faith; faith in the power of the God of Pentecost to convict and convert three thousand in a day. Faith, not in a process of culture by which we hope to train children into a state of salvation, but faith in the mighty God who can quicken a dead soul into life in a moment; faith in moral and spiritual revolution rather than evolution. ~ A.C. Dixon

I thought it would be a good thing to follow John Redmond's words. I thought for my mother's sake, her gentle soul, for the sake of my own children, I might go out and fight for to save Europe so that we might have the Home Rule in Ireland in the upshot. I came out to fight for a country that doesn't exist, and now, Willie, mark my words, it never will. ~ Sebastian Barry

If I could teach my children only one thing, it would be the skill of marketing. For with that skill, they could be successful at anything they chose for the rest of their lives. ~ Howard Ruff

This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet. ~ Anna Quindlen

I always say that comedians and actors were all kind of shy when they were young. I was very, believe it or not, kind of embarrassed as a child. But my mother was a very strong lady and she was the one that kept it going when I thought it would be over for me as a performer. She was always my inspiration and she was a big influence on me. ~ Don Rickles

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

At various times during the last four thousand years God has asserted his rights and endeavoured to establish his own authority, his own laws, and his own government among the children of men. ~ Orson Pratt

I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putting it forth for the world. ~ James Ellroy

We found ... that being a good parent to one's own child was never and in no way enough; until we were all responsible for all the children of the world, no child would ever be safe, no society could survive. ~ Eda LeShan

Parents provoke their children to anger by not practicing biblical love, not considering their children as more important than themselves, and not dying to self to become a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. ~ John C. Broger

He has his good side and his bad side. Very dark indeed is his majesty when he wants to be. When he was young, he made a choice, like a tree does when it decides to grow one way or the other. He grew large and green until he shadowed over the whole forest, but most of his branches are twisted. ~ Nancy Farmer