Losing A Child Quotes

Losing a child must be the second most painful thing ever. The most painful thing would be to lose the child, find him, and then watch him be murdered by his sibling, who happens to contain half of Satan's DNA. ~ Jarod Kintz

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

As someone who has lived the nightmare of losing a child, I know that the enormous hole left behind remains forever. ~ Ann Hood

Life is a cosmic grab-bag. At this moment, somewhere in the world, someone is losing a child, skiing down a mountain, having an orgasm, getting a haircut, lying on a bed of pain, singing on a stage, drowning, getting married, starving in a gutter. In the end, aren't we all that same person? An aeon is a thousand million years, and an aeon ago every atom in our bodies was a part of a star. Pay attention to me, God. We are all a part of your universe, and if we die, part of your universe dies with us. ~ Sidney Sheldon

To be perfectly frank, there is an odd place after losing a child, where you think somehow your life is worth less. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

There's something really unnatural about losing a child, and there's something unnatural about having to write an elegy for your child, but I felt that I wanted people to know what he was like. ~ Edward Hirsch

I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there ~ Jodi Picoult

If you know someone who has lost a child, and you're afraid to mention
them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that
they died
you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What
you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and
... that is a great gift. ~ Elizabeth Edwards

Life, Rose well knew, could throw some hard punches at you, but nothing hurt as much as losing a child, or seeing one of your children hurt and suffering. Becoming a parent changed you forever, as nothing else could. Not good or bad fortune. Not friendships. Not even a man or a woman. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

There's nothing that symbolizes loss or grief more than a mother losing a child. ~ David LaChapelle

I think if my child died I would prefer it if I were dead. ~ Saoirse Ronan

I cannot tell you how often I have counseled a grieving woman about a miscarriage or an abortion from years before. There were so many reasons why it was not practical or reasonable to have a child, so on a rational level there was often an understanding and acceptance. However, this did not relieve the pain and guilt of losing a child. In trance states we would often go looking for that soul. What a surprise for many when they discovered that this soul came back as a niece, nephew or even a younger child of their own. ~ Stephen Poplin

Yeah, she said she just can't wait for you and Daddy to get to heaven. ... From that moment on, the wound from one of the most painful episodes in our lives, losing a child we had wanted very much, began to heal. ~ Todd Burpo

Tim Keller once said that God gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything that He knows. The idea that the prince of Heaven would empty himself and become poor, to live and dwell among us is humbling. The idea that there is nothing in the human experience that God himself has not suffered, even losing a child, is sustaining. And the idea that in His resurrection, Jesus' scars became His glory is empowering. God will use these scars for His glory, as they become our glory. Indeed, the end hasn't been written. ~ Timothy Keller

A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That's how awful the loss is. ~ Jay Neugeboren

When a husband loses his wife, they call him a widower. When a wife loses her husband, they call her a widow. And when somebody's parents die, they call them an orphan. But there is no name for a parent, a grieving mother, or a devastated father who have lost their child. Because the pain behind the loss is so immeasurable and unbearable, that it cannot be described in a single word. It just cannot be described. ~ Bhavya Kaushik

Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. "Impossible," replied the Melanesians. "Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years." Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I'd certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are. ~ Carl Sagan

I used to hate swimming at school so much that I would always sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and take my swimming costume out of my gym bag and hide it in the house somewhere. Then I'd never have to go swimming at school. This went on for months and I never got caught and my Mum turned into a nervous wreck because the thought she was losing her memory ... and then one day she caught me and got super angry. That was kind of bad. ~ Charli XCX

You are more than someone's experiment, more than Dr. Jacobs' brain child," he whispered fiercely. "You have a right to want things for yourself, Ariane, to see yourself as a person. How do I get you to believe that? ~ Stacey Kade

It was not easy with a newborn, asking your wife to give up the family home and your security. ~ Heston Blumenthal

As a child of God, you aren't just a manifestation of your biological family. You are a manifestation of your spiritual family - your true family of origin. If you let Him, the Spirit of God will manifest the Father and the Son through you. ~ Mark Batterson

When I approach a child he inspires in me two sentiments tenderness for what he is and respect for what he may become. ~ Louis Pasteur

As with most voluntary school integration programs, dispersal of the black children was the norm. In Portland, no more than forty-five black children were bused to any single elementary school, and white schools of four-hundred to five-hundred pupils received as few as four and in most instances only ten to fifteen black students. Brush Elementary, the all-white school Rist selected for daily observation, received about thirty black children.
The principal, along with most of his all-white teaching staff, had never taught a black child. He hired a black school aide because he felt that most of the white students had never spoken to a black person. His lack of racial sensitivity was illustrated in a staff discussion about the collection of milk money, when he said, "I guess we had better not call it chocolate milk any longer. It would probably now be more appropriate to refer to it as black milk. ~ Derrick A. Bell

When was the last time those two kids had a full meal or a good, long, clean drink of water? This was the way he had been as a child. Nothing had changed. The sultan still sat in his beautiful golden-domed palace, playing with his toys while people starved on the streets. Nothing would ever change until the sultan- or someone-woke up and saw how his people were suffering. ~ Liz Braswell

I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation ... ~ Elie Wiesel

A child may be "spoiled" by a lack of training or by inappropriate love that gives or trains incorrectly. ~ Garry Chapman

The best part about losing in a two player game is that there is always a human who wins. ~ Abhishek Kapoor

Teach a child to play solitaire, and she'll be able to entertain herself when there's no one around. Teach her tennis, and she'll know what to do when she's on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home. ~ Joyce Maynard

There is something about losing your mother that is permanent and inexpressable - a wound that will never quite heal. ~ Susan Wiggs

Affairs which look small or absurd to a full-grown man may loom up as big as a
mountain to a child; and you shouldn't allow a fact that you saw a thing 'so much that I am sick of it,' to turn you away from an inquiring child. You wasn't sick of it, on that far-past day on which you first saw it. ~ Ernest Vincent Wright

You still think like a child, don't you? Clay figurines sunk to their ankles in the sand, one here, one there, standing just so. One says this, the other says that, then you reach down and rearrange them accordingly. Scenes, vistas, stark with certainty. ~ Steven Erikson

According to the surgeon general, obesity today is officially an epidemic; it is arguably the most pressing public health problem we face, costing the health care system an estimated $90 billion a year. Three of every five Americans are overweight; one of every five is obese. The disease formerly known as adult-onset diabetes has had to be renamed Type II diabetes since it now occurs so frequently in children. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that a child born in 2000 has a one-in-three chance of developing diabetes. (An African American child's chances are two in five.) Because of diabetes and all the other health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The problem is not limited to America: The United Nations reported that in 2000 the number of people suffering from overnutrition--a billion--had officially surpassed the number suffering from malnutrition--800 million. ~ Michael Pollan

Most advice on child-rearing is sought in the hope that it will confirm our prior convictions. If the parent had wished to proceedin a certain way but was made insecure by opposing opinions of neighbors, friends, or relatives, then it gives him great comfort to find his ideas seconded by an expert. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

So in the sense in which the apostle James seems to use the word justify for manifestative justification, a man is justified not only by faith, but also by works; as a tree is manifested to be good, not only by immediately examining the tree, but also by the fruit,664 Prov. xx. 11. "Even a child is known by his doing, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. ~ Jonathan Edwards

Anybody who thinks there is any vague chance of adult exchange with a child is up the spout; and would be much less disappointed if they recognized the chasm unbridgeably dividing them. ~ Caitlin Thomas

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time. ~ Donna Tartt

Unalert yet sometimes suffused through and through by an inward light, is characteristic of the primitive and of the child (and also of those moments of religious and artistic inspiration that occur ever less and less often as a Culture grows older) right ~ Oswald Spengler

We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well. ~ Simone Weil

When we are children, play comes to us naturally, but our capacity for play collapses as we age. Sex often remains the last arena of play we can permit ourselves, a bridge to our childhood. Long after the mind has been filled with injunctions to be serious, the body remains a free zone, unencumbered by reason and judgment. In lovemaking, we can recapture the utterly uninhibited movement of the child, who has not yet developed self-consciousness before the judging gaze of others. ~ Esther Perel

It is time to teach society on how to be empathetic with people grieving. ~ Nathalie Himmelrich

What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed.
"I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

One accurate way to describe abortion is subtle infanticide. That is: child-killing done in a way that the people don't recognize it as child-killing. That reality is why the word abortion exists. Some words are created to cloak reality the same way procedures are created to cloak reality. "Abortion" is cloaked child-killing ~ John Piper

Zachary notified the local newspapers and all pertinent radio and television stations. He called a press conference at the home of his client, Jennifer Tracey, to announce the filing of a major multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major religious institution. The dye had been cast. A long, tough road lay ahead. For Zachary, Jennifer, Kenny, and Jake, there was no turning back. ~ Mark M. Bello

A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing. Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but. If the condition had been new, or more localized, he might have understood, but loneliness both encompassed his life and overreached it. ~ Stephen King

Behind this story so far is another story, as behind the girders of an ancient bridge is the skeleton of a child which superstition says keeps the bridge standing. ~ James Purdy

young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persist
Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., and Rosenbluth, D. (1956). The effects of mother-child separation: A follow-up study. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 29, 211-249. ~ John Bowlby

The images are visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic. They aren't laid down on the same tracks as thought. And sometimes, when they return to you, it is as if you feel them for the very first time. Memory lives on in the details, like the color of a room, a tone of a voice, the touch of a child, the smell of a man. ~ Martha Manning

No one in my family or my circle of friends had ever had to confront something like this. Jamie was seventeen, a child on the verge of womanhood, dying and still very much alive at the same time. I was afraid, more afraid than I'd ever been, not only for her, but for me as well. I lived in fear of doing something wrong, of doing something that would offend her. Was it okay to ever get angry in her presence? Was it okay to talk about the future anymore? ~ Nicholas Sparks

Fundamentalists didn't try to disprove science. They didn't argue against it. They pronounced against it! It was the equivalent of a parent clinching an argument with a child by shouting: 'because I say so'. That's what fundamentalist religion does. It refutes not by evidence but by authority. Why is Darwin wrong? Because the Bible says so! But they did more than pontificate. They tried to ban science itself. That's ~ Richard Holloway

All children are curious and I wonder by what process this trait becomes developed in some and suppressed in others. I suspect again that schools and colleges help in the suppression insofar as they meet curiosity by giving the answers, rather than by some method that leads from narrower questions to broader questions. It is hard to satisfy the curiosity of a child, and even harder to satisfy the curiosity of a scientist, and methods that meet curiosity with satisfaction are thus not apt to foster the development of the child into the scientist. I don't advocate turning all children into professional scientists, although I think there would be advantages if all adults retained something of the questioning attitude, if their curiosity were less easily satisfied by dogma, of whatever variety. ~ Marston Bates

White voters who feel they are losing a historical hold on power are reacting to something real. For the bulk of American history, you couldn't win the presidency without winning a majority - usually an overwhelming majority - of white vote. Though this changed before Obama - Bill Clinton won slightly less of the white vote than his Republican challengers - the election of an African American president leading a young, multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening. ~ Ezra Klein

Nothing is sadder than a child burdened by reality, after all. Those stories were our family fairy tales. ~ Veronica Montes

A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug. ~ George Borrow

I was always very maternal with my friends. I wasn't the kind of little girl that played with dolls and pretended I was the mommy. I wasn't that child, so when I say I was always maternal, I don't mean in that sense - but I've always been a nurturer. ~ Kim Fields

The truest of all truths is this: You are a child of God. Out of more than six billion people on earth now, He knows your name, what you fear and what you revere. He cares about the things you care about. He wants your happiness and success, and will reach to the farthest corner of the universe to see that you obtain your noblest dreams. ~ Toni Sorenson

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child ... to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat.


Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. ~ Jonathan Swift

When Naasir was yet a child, Dmitri had told him he must learn as many languages as possible, so no one could keep secrets from him. This wasn't the first time that advice had held Naasir in good stead. ~ Nalini Singh

I went to law school. And I became a prosecutor. I took on a specialty that very few choose to pursue. I prosecuted child abuse and child homicide cases. Cases that were truly gut-wrenching. But standing up for those kids, being their voice for justice was the honor of a lifetime. ~ Susana Martinez

Having to explain to a child of today, who has learned to swipe before they can speak, that certain aspects of a person's life must remain private for the preservation of one's sanity is almost frivolous. ~ Aysha Taryam

Raising a child is a time of RAPID CHANGE! From the ages of 0 to 19, a PARENT can age over 30 years! ~ Tanya Masse

A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places. ~ Abbott Eliot Kittredge

Love and pain become one in the same in the eyes of a wounded child. ~ Pat Benatar

There isn't a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy, for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business. ~ John Cheever