Happy Childhood Quotes

I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife. ~ Patti Smith

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it. ~ Emma Donoghue

A happy childhood is hard to overcome. ~ Marty Rubin

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory. ~ Haim Shapira

The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood. ~ David Lynch

But the gates of my happy childhood had clanged shut behind me; I had become adult enough to recognize the need to conceal unbearable emotions for the sake of others. ~ Eva Figes

I had a happy childhood: extremely outdoorsy and independent. ~ Dasha Zhukova

I didn't have a happy childhood. ~ Giorgio Armani

One thing that makes me very happy is to see the growing activism among chefs in America. Chefs like Tom Colicchio, Bill Telepan, and Rachel Ray and food writers like Michael Pollan have gone to Congress, indeed sometimes even have testified before Congress, have lent this support to Mrs. Obama's effort to combat childhood obesity. ~ Jose Andres

Child. This ability to grieve - that is, to give up the illusion of his "happy" childhood, to feel and recognize the full extent of the hurt he has endured - can restore the depressive's vitality and creativity and free the grandiose person from the exertions of and dependence on his Sisyphean task. If a person is able, during this long process, to experience the reality that he was never loved as a child for what he was but was instead needed and exploited for his achievements, success, and good qualities - and that he sacrificed his childhood for this form of love - he will be very deeply shaken, but one day he will feel the desire to end these efforts. He will discover in himself a need to live according to his true self and no longer be forced to earn "love" that always leaves him empty-handed, since it is given to his false self - something he has begun to identify and relinquish. ~ Alice Miller

Fortunate Newton, happy childhood of science. Nature to him was an open book. He stands before us strong, certain, and alone. ~ Albert Einstein

I had a very happy childhood; I just wasn't a very happy child. ~ Hank Green

I had a happy childhood and acceptance in the community. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again on Tuesday? But at eight, 10, 12, you don't realise you're going to die. There is always the possibility of escape. There is always somewhere else and far away, a fact I had never really appreciated until I read Gitta Sereny's profoundly unsettling Cries Unheard about child-killer Mary Bell.
At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We begin to picture a time when there will no longer be somewhere else and far away. We have jobs, children, partners, debts, responsibilities. And if many of these things enrich our lives immeasurably, those shrinking limits are something we all have to come to terms with.
This, I think, is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks. ~ Mark Haddon

I was fortunate to have had a lively, happy childhood, but somewhere along the way I convinced myself I wasn't wanted anywhere or by anyone if I wasn't thin. ~ Lucy Davis

Surpanakha, Ahalya, Renuka, Urmila - each one had a story of her own. Each one had followed a path of her own. Her path, her way, was hers alone.
Sita had learnt what she could from their experiences. At first, she felt only disdain and anger for them. Later, when she understood that the anguish in their lives was similar, she felt a camaraderie, a companionship with them. When Sita heard the sufferings of others, she realized that she was not alone. The awareness that she was one of them gave her strength. And it was that strength which enabled her to withstand the disgrace and bear her children, to give them a happy childhood and to train them in all the skills. ~ Volga

I WAS born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

Our culture has the expectation that the memories of a happy childhood will somehow ground you and prepare you for adult life. But what about the memories that cut, that wound, that won't heal? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can't accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming them, drawing strength from the reserves laid down in the good years. ~ Deborah Lawrenson

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. ~ Frank McCourt

A happy childhood ... is the worst possible preparation for life. ~ Kinky Friedman

A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Our problems stem from our childhood. Ray was, for so long, the only boy. Then I arrive and take all his limelight away from him. That must have quite a profound effect. I sometimes think that Ray was only happy for three-and-a-half years in his life. And those were the three-and-a-half years before I was born. ~ Dave Davies

Something in me was always watching life from the outside, permanently obsessed with the notion of belonging vs. not-belonging [to a group]. It did not make for a happy childhood, but it was excellent training for a writer. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, UNICEF Executive Director, Excellencies and distinguished guests from across the world.

My name is Kim Nam Jun, also known as RM, the leader of the group BTS. It's an incredible honour to be invited to an occasion with such significance for today's young generation.

Last November, BTS launched the "Love Myself" campaign with UNICEF, building on our belief that "true love first begins with loving myself." We have been partnering with UNICEF's #ENDviolence program to protect children and young people all over the world from violence.

Our fans have become a major part of this campaign with their action and enthusiasm. We truly have the best fans in the world!

I would like to begin by talking about myself.

I was born in Ilsan, a city near Seoul, South Korea. It's a beautiful place, with a lake, hills, and even an annual flower festival. I spent a happy childhood there, and I was just an ordinary boy.

I would look up at the night sky in wonder and dream the dreams of a boy. I used to imagine that I was a superhero, saving the world.

In an intro to one of our early albums, there is a line that says, "My heart stopped…I was maybe nine or ten."

Looking back, that's when I began to worry about what other people thought of me and started seeing myself through their eyes. I stopped looking up at the stars at night. I stopped daydreaming. I tried to jam myself into mo ~ Kim Namjoon

It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straitened by war and overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of English adolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, I had added a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. ~ Evelyn Waugh

My childhood was a happy one, spent in a tall house in South Kensington and later in East Sussex, but my early and mid teens were less successful. ~ Julian Fellowes

My childhood was happy, joyful but very difficult. ~ Maria Das Gracas Silva Foster

At forty-three, I bought my first house. I'd wanted one like crazy. A house meant family, a happy childhood for my litttle girl and for the little girl self inside me ... I was soon overwhelmed by the upkeep and overcome by the yardwork ... In the bright light of closing, it was obvious: it was never a house I wanted; it was what a house symbolized to me. (254) ~ Victoria Moran

I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood. ~ Isabel Allende

Childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons. ~ Jerry Smith

They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter. ~ Josephine Hart

I used to have Bible studies at my house. I was in the choir. I was mischievous but also a real mama's boy. It was a pretty happy childhood. ~ Woody Harrelson

My parents are good role models because they've worked hard and gave me a happy childhood. ~ Sophie Ellis-Bextor

They say a happy childhood is a lousy preparation for life. Kids who spend their playground days fat, ginger or gay know the truth. ~ Adam Baker

I had a wonderful mother who wanted my sister and me to have everything, even though money was a very prominent thing we didn't have. But we had a very happy childhood - pretty much ideal, in fact. ~ Natalie Babbitt

I had a marvelously happy childhood. ~ Darius Milhaud

The Nurse's Song

This mighty man of whom I sing,
The greatest of them all,
Was once a teeny little thing,
Just eighteen inches tall.

I knew him as a tiny tot,
I nursed him on my knee.
I used to sit him on the pot
And wait for him to wee.

I always washed between his toes,
And cut his little nails.
I brushed his hair and wiped his nose
And weighed him on the scales.

Through happy childhood days he strayed,
As all nice children should.
I smacked him when he disobeyed,
And stopped when he was good.

It soon began to dawn on me
He wasn't very bright,
Because when he was twenty-three
He couldn't read or write.

"What shall we do?" his parents sob.
"The boy has got the vapors!
He couldn't even get a job
Delivering the papers!"

"Ah-ha," I said, "this little clot
Could be a politician."
"Nanny," he cried, "Oh Nanny, what
A super proposition!"

"Okay," I said, "let's learn and note
The art of politics.
Let's teach you how to miss the boat
And how to drop some bricks,
And how to win the people's vote
And lots of other tricks.

Let's learn to make a speech a day
Upon the T.V. screen,
In which you never never say
Exactly what you mean.
And most important, by the way,
In not to let your teeth decay,
And keep your fingers clean."

Roald Dahl

I had a very happy childhood, but I still used my imagination as a leisure resort. ~ Geraldine McCaughrean

Listening to Leonard, Madeleine felt impoverished by her happy childhood. She never wondered why she acted the way she did, or what effect her parents had had on her personality. Being fortunate had dulled her powers of observation. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

It was a small provincial place with great people and I had a happy childhood growing up in Queens. ~ Fran Drescher

A happy childhood can fortify one against the ravages of life, and part of that happiness is found in books, which become our constant companions for the rest of our lives. ~ Suzy Davies

I love Halloween. It reminds me of my happy childhood days as a student at Wampus Elementary School in Armonk, N.Y., when we youngsters used to celebrate Halloween by making decorations out of construction paper and that white paste that you could eat. ~ Dave Barry

I was quite shy when I was younger, but I'm not one of those people who can complain of a bad childhood or any trauma. There was none in my life. I had a wonderfully happy childhood. ~ Emilia Fox

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I'm a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist. ~ David Quammen

think that every one, no matter how many troubles he may have when he grows up, ought to have a happy childhood to look back upon. ~ Jean Webster

A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have in their power to bestow. ~ Mary Cholmondeley

I'm a lucky boy. Never wanted for anything; new tracksuit, new pair of football boots. I had a happy childhood. ~ Martin Compston

I'm incredibly boring; I had a very happy childhood. I never starved, nor did I have a silver spoon in my mouth. I'm one of those terribly middle-of-the-road, British middle class, South London gents. ~ Jude Law

Anyone who had died young after a happy childhood had won a great victory, since he would be forever spared the discovery of what sort of place the world really is. Others must look forward to death by defeat - their bodies gone, their world destroyed. ~ Carlos Baker

I think you never forget your childhood, whether it was happy or unhappy. ~ Marcel Carne

The stories my pupils told me were astonishing. One told how he had witnessed his cousin being shot in the back five times; another how his parents had died of AIDS. Another said that he'd probably been to more funerals than parties in his young life. For me - someone who had had an idyllic, happy childhood - this was staggering. ~ Erin Gruwell

Alas ! How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty ! The cares, and sorrows, and the hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth. ~ Charles Dickens

If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you. ~ Tracy Kidder

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood. ~ Jonathan Coe

A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I think that every one , no matter how many troubles the may have when he grows up, ought to have a happy childhood to look back upon. And if I ever have any children of my own, no matter how unhappy I may be, I am not going to let them have any cares until they grow up. ~ Jean Webster

I had a happy childhood, with many stimulations and support from my parents who, in postwar times, when it was difficult to buy things, made children's books and toys for us. We had much freedom and were encouraged by our parents to do interesting things. ~ Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

I have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good education, I enjoyed working as a teacher, journalist and author. I have loved a wonderful man for over 33 years, and I believe he loves me, too. ~ Maeve Binchy

I had a very happy childhood. But I was sent off to boarding school at quite a young age, this massive Victorian house that was suffocated in ivy. I think there is a part of that school in 'Heap House.' ~ Edward Carey

A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose. ~ Hortense Calisher

I had a happy childhood. ~ Alastair Campbell

John could write a mean song. He had a lot of venom in him. Whereas I had a happy childhood. ~ Paul McCartney

I had a very happy childhood and very loving parents. We didn't have much money and I suppose therefore you felt that anything you did you'd have to do on your own, so it does make you quite motivated. ~ Terry Leahy

For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood. ~ Alfred Schnittke

My childhood wasn't very happy. It's a long, grim story about being a Jew in a small southern town. ~ Stanley Donen

Growing up, I had a very happy childhood, with two parents who are still very much together. ~ Kate Winslet

Think, for a moment, of the countless happy childhood hours you spent with this amazing device: Drawing perfect horizontals, drawing perfect verticals, drawing really spastic diagonals, trying to scrape away the silver powder from the window so you could look inside. ~ Dave Barry

A few minutes after they left, Harold bought the blanket from his bed, surrounded himself with his stuffed-toy animals, and built a fort out of them. Children project souls into their favorite stuffed animals and commune with them in the way adults commune with religious icons. Years later he would remember a happy childhood, but it was interwoven with painful separations, confusions, misapprehensions, traumas, and mysteries. This is why all biographies are inadequate; they can never capture the inner currents. This is why self knowledge is limited. Only a few remarkable people can sense the way early experience has built models in the brain. Later in life we build fictions and theories to paper over the mystery of what is happening deep inside, but in childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force. ~ David Brooks

Sculpting them in a drizzle shawl,
I would have have weaved your dreams
in my distinct eyes;
I would have taken your cheeks,
and decorated them with full moon sights,
writing verses with starry eyes;
I would have invented diction suiting
your stammering tongue,
writing stories about your happy childhood;
I would have traveled beside western winds,
bringing roses from far lands, from Samarkand,
from the rose gardens touching Turkish valleys,
from mountains smelling of Azerbaijan.
I would have portrayed you a an honest mother,
buying your children a happy house, a giant sky;
I would have made orchards of your ripe smiles,
tending rains and sunlight into their broad borders;
Ah, I would have sown your braided hair
into almonds, saffron and homegrown walnuts,
into tufts of a lifelong breeze. ~ Ashfaq Saraf

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy. ~ Neil Gaiman

I look back to a happy childhood. ~ Catherine Helen Spence

I like birthday cake. It's so symbolic. It's a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just 'Happy birthday!' because it's this emblem of childhood and a happy day. ~ Aimee Bender

It's never too late to have a happy childhood. ~ Tom Robbins

I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer. ~ Maeve Binchy

One doesn't know if one had a happy childhood or not. I don't really know what it means. ~ John Malkovich

The achievement of freedom is hardly possible without the felt mourning. This ability to mourn, i.e, to give up the illusion of a happy childhood, can restore vitality and creativity if a person is able to experience that he was never loved as a child for what he was, but for his achievements, success and good qualities. And that he sacrificed his childhood for this love, this will shake him very deeply. ~ Alice Miller

Must be an awful thing to have a happy childhood,' I said absently, lifting my drink to my lips. 'What terrible preparation for life. ~ E.O. Higgins

My dad worked all sorts of jobs when I was growing up and finally ended up as a surveyor; my mum delivers meals to old folk around where we live. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but I had a very happy childhood. ~ Michelle Dockery

I had a very happy childhood, happy teenage years and I was famous by the time I was 22. A charmed life. ~ Rik Mayall

There are so many things we expect God to do: lead us, bring good people into our life, give us a life of abundance, make us happy, fix our problems, fix other people, triumph over our enemies, etc. However, why do so many people think they will get any of this if they choose not to live righteously? If you choose to hurt other people and not take any responsibility for it or live your life as if everyone else is the problem, except you then God is going to lead you back to the same people, same places, same situations so you can fix the same problem you ran from. God is not standing in your future telling you to forget what you did. He is standing in front of you telling you to go back and undo what you did! He leads you to places that change who you are. He doesn't lead you to places to forget who you are. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I'm so happy to be in a committed relationship. ~ Adam Lambert

Set a goal to be happy; now do only what makes you happy. ~ Debasish Mridha

I'm happy in Madrid, my kids are happy and my wife is happy, so everything's good. If anyone knows about contracts they take a while to sort out. ~ David Beckham

Happy Families. What's that all about, eh? A bloody busted flush is what it is. You surround yourself with other people so the night doesn't seem quite so dark. Shout down the sound of the wind with arguments about whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Best not to kid yourself. Best not to give any hostages to fortune. You're on your own in the end. Always. Where else would you want to be? ~ Mike Carey

My childhood taught me nothing ... zero. ~ Lee Radziwill

I was raised in a religion that I never felt embraced me. That wasn't her fault. I had this amazing childhood. My mother is of her generation. If I'm going to ask her to accept me exactly as I am, I have to give her the same. She has read part of the book, but my sisters told her which chapters not to read! ~ Leslie Jordan

The bird began to carry them to a new life in a new land. We'll be happy ever after, the queen wanted to whisper to her daughter as they flew, but she knew that was not true. Life never is that way. And so instead she held her daughter in silence, heart to heart, and as they traveled each heart drew on the other's strength, so that when they reached their destination they would be ready. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. ~ Jack Gilbert

Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six."
" I KNOW there is not Santa Claus."
"Yet you must teach the child that these things are so."
"Why? When I, myself, do not believe?"
"Because ... the child must have a valuable things which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which [to] live things that never were. It is necessary that she BELIEVE. She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. ~ Betty Smith

Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."
"I hate them all, and you, and myself," his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Levin was on the point of retiring, the old Prince came in, and, after greeting the ladies, addressed Levin. ~ Leo Tolstoy

My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

All my habits through life have been singularly removed from any condition of reliance on others, and the feeling - right or wrong - that aloneness is my proper position has prevailed since my early childhood, no doubt nourished and strengthened by many and quick-following bereavements. ~ Dorothea Dix

How happy is that guardian angel who accompanies a soul to Holy Mass! ~ John Vianney

I always felt that I had a childhood. I went to regular school whenever I wasn't working. At one point, I wanted to be a marine biologist. ~ Kim Fields

Mal slid his hand behind my neck, rubbing at the tight muscles. "Relax," he ordered. "It isn't good for the baby."
"I am not pregnant."
"Ah, shit, that's right. We were s'posed to be keeping it quiet. Sorry, pumpkin." He smacked himself in the forehead. I would've been happy to do it for him. ~ Kylie Scott

Still, I couldn't get over Dad calling those farmers. People might think helping is hard, but really that's the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It's the asking that's so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you're not strong enough to do it alone. Mom must really be hurting for Dad to be so brave. ~ Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world. ~ Linus Pauling