Sleeping Child Quotes

Isn't that a beautiful tale, grandfather," said Heidi, as the latter continued to sit without speaking, for she had expected him to express pleasure and astonishment. "You are right, Heidi; it is a beautiful tale," he replied, but he looked so grave as he said it that Heidi grew silent herself and sat looking quietly at her pictures. Presently she pushed her book gently in front of him and said, "See how happy he is there," and she pointed with her finger to the figure of the returned prodigal, who was standing by his father clad in fresh raiment as one of his own sons again. A few hours later, as Heidi lay fast asleep in her bed, the grandfather went up the ladder and put his lamp down near her bed so that the light fell on the sleeping child. Her hands were still folded as if she had fallen asleep saying her prayers, an expression of peace and trust lay on the little face, and something in it seemed to appeal to the grandfather, for he stood a long time gazing down at her without speaking. At last he too folded his hands, and with bowed head said in a low voice, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am not worthy to be called thy son." And two large tears rolled down the old man's cheeks. Early the next morning he stood in front of his hut and gazed quietly around him. The fresh bright morning sun lay on mountain and valley. The sound of a few early bells rang up from the valley, and the birds were singing their morning song in the fir trees. He stepped ~ Johanna Spyri

Another year passed on . The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night :And Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep,and think in her half dreamy, half awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side ,as she used to do 'in the days of long-ago'; with shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

No one can posses an afternoon of rain beating against the window, or the serenity of a sleeping child, or the magical moment when the waves break on the rocks. No one can posses the beautiful things of this Earth, but we can know them and love them. It is through such moments that God reveals himself to mankind. ~ Paulo Coelho

The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child. ~ J. H. Oldham

No one can possess a sunset like the one we saw that evening. Just as no one can possess an afternoon of rain beating against the window, or serenity of a sleeping child, or the magical moment when the waves break on the rocks. No one can possess the beautiful things in this Earth, but we can know them and love them. ~ Paulo Coelho

It was two years ago that I first met Yuki. I remember that painfully thin figure covered in dirt: malnourished, exhausted and carrying a sleeping child in his arms like it's the most precious thing in the world. ~ Kyuugou

Now that I know how birth works-now that I've been talked through labor by that quiet-voiced woman-I feel I've finally been told what my task is. It's simple-so simple I'm amazed I didn't know it before. One morning I am going to wake up, and before I sleep again, I will have to tick off a long list of contractions, one by one. And when I get to the last one, I will have my girl. Each one of these will be a job in itself-a minute-long experience that would alarm anyone suddenly struck by it, without warning-but I know the one fact that makes it easy: there is nothing awry. Everything is as it should be. Unlike some pains, these don't signal something going wrong but something going right. This is what I did not realize the first time, when I prayed wildly for these pains to stop. I didn't know then that these pains were actually the answer, and that their every alternative was much, much worse. Now I know what they are, and what they're for, I greet each one with calm cheer: 60 seconds to breathe through, as limp as a sleeping child, so that there is nowhere for this wash of sensation to snag-no tensed muscle it can get caught on. I am a clear glass of water, leaf-smoke blown sideways in the wind; empty space, for a moon to sail through. ~ Caitlin Moran

The First Rule of Parenting states that you never wake a peacefully sleeping child. ~ David Mitchell

There are times ... when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.
... When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Who knows what crumbling infrastructure lies beneath our sleeping children? Actually, many people do - they pay surveyors to take a look. ~ Christine Pelosi

Not long after, and while it was still twilight, the grandfather also went to bed, for he was up every morning at sunrise, and the sun came climbing up over the mountains at a very early hour during these summer months. The wind grew so tempestuous during the night, and blew in such gusts against the walls, that the hut trembled and the old beams groaned and creaked. It came howling and wailing down the chimney like voices of those in pain, and it raged with such fury among the old fir trees that here and there a branch was snapped and fell. In the middle of the night the old man got up. "The child will be frightened," he murmured half aloud. He mounted the ladder and went and stood by the child's bed.

Outside the moon was struggling with the dark, fast-driving clouds, which at one moment left it clear and shining, and the next swept over it, and all again was dark. Just now the moonlight was falling through the round window straight on to Heidi's bed. She lay under the heavy coverlid, her cheeks rosy with sleep, her head peacefully resting on her little round arm, and with a happy expression on her baby face as if dreaming of something pleasant. The old man stood looking down on the sleeping child until the moon again disappeared behind the clouds and he could see no more, then he went back to bed. ~ Johanna Spyri

A mole or defect on a person is supposed to be caused by a fairy nipping him before birth. A matted lock near the neck of a sleeping child is called an elflock and is the deed of a mischievous fairy ~ Astra Cielo

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

That's why we discourage parents from forcing kids to express sorrow before they are sincerely sorry. Your child may simply be learning how to act on the outside in order to avoid consequences. Begin as early as you can to foster an authentic faith, which is an "inside out" experience. Do this by encouraging honest expressions of what is really going on in the heart. Desire authenticity over pretense; openness over secrecy; and honest conversation over what you wish to hear. Be a loving, safe person with whom your kids can share what is really going on in their hearts. Sometimes all that is needed for a heart to repent is the opportunity to safely express the truth. ~ Ellen M. Schuknecht

The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. ~ Julia Child

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child. ~ Tavis Smiley

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them. ~ Maria Montessori

If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's. ~ Johan Huizinga

He sounded like a man with a mouthful of marbles, articulating his goatbone underjaw laboriously, the original one having been shot away. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Seen on a poster: I once asked a child what the meaning of life was. "Feed the kitties," she said, "feed the kitties. ~ Bren McClain

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing. ~ Judy Blume

Because she did not look behind, September did not see the smoky-glass casket close itself primly up again. She did not see it bend in half until it cracked, and Death hop up again, quite well, quite awake, and quite small once more. She certainly did not see Death stand on her tiptoes and blow a kiss after her, a kiss that rushed through all the frosted leaves of the autumnal forest, but could not quite catch a child running as fast as she could. As all mothers know, children travel faster than kisses. The speed of kisses is, in fact, what Doctor Fallow would call a cosmic constant. The speed of children has no limits. ~ Catherynne M Valente

No. I was an only child. ~ Robert Fulghum

Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex. ~ Dennis Prager

I don't think we're in love anymore.
I think about sex constantly.
I hate your parents. I'm pretty sure they hate me.
Do you have any idea how fucked up this is?
I've been sleeping with my back to you for months now,
and you haven't touched me once.
I almost went home with the guy who gave me change
at the bank. I almost asked his name.
I don't think we're in love anymore.
We don't kiss like we used to. Your lips are always
cold and mine are always chapped.
Neither of us even apologize.
I haven't shaved in days and you haven't noticed.
I am insatiable.
I am a disaster just waiting to remember
the storm in her bones.
I am proud of this.
I want someone to fuck me so hard
that something inside of me snaps
and I can't stop screaming 'I love you, oh my God, I love you.'
I don't think we're in love anymore.
Sometimes, I genuinely think the sky is bleeding, and I don't
know how to stop it.
I don't think I am capable of staying put.
My bags are already packed. I've been waiting for you
to check the bedroom.
I don't think we're in love anymore.
I don't know whose fault it is.
Let's stop trying to make a broken thing work.
We were brave for trying.
We were brave for trying. ~ Caitlyn Siehl

From watching children play with objects designed as "amusements," we come to a new place, a place of cold comforts. Child and adult, we imagine made to measure companions. Or, at least we imagine companions who are always interested in us. ~ Sherry Turkle

You almost wish that Bill and Steve had a genetically engineered love child and, who knows, maybe we should genotype Elon to see if that's what happened. ~ Ashlee Vance

Maybe we slip so easily into blaming our parents - you're perpetually a child and they're perpetually a parent and you long to balance the equation, but it can only be balanced posthumously. ~ Richard Eyre

Meditation is doing what you are doing - whether you are doing formal meditation or child care. ~ Norman Fischer

Vexed with herself, Cassandra took a handkerchief from the congealed pocket of her dress and pressed it hard over a new trickle of tears. After a minute or two had passed, she became aware of someone ascending the stairs in a measured tread.
Embarrassed to be caught crying on the steps like a lost child, Cassandra struggled to rise.
A low voice stopped her. "No... please. I only wanted to give you this."
Through a blur, she saw the dark form of Tom Severin, who had come to stand a step below her, with two glasses of iced champagne in his hands. He extended one to her.
Cassandra began to reach for it, but hesitated. "I'm not supposed to have champagne unless it's mixed with punch."
One corner of his wide mouth tipped upward. "I won't tell."
Cassandra took the glass gratefully, and drank. The cold fizz was wonderful, easing the dry tightness of her throat.
"Thank you," she murmured. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local patron saint, or furniture being moved by the slime-buckets living upstairs, and go right on sleeping soundly. But the ringing of the telephone, the triumphal march of the cell phone, or the doorbell, no: Those are all sounds of summons in response to which the civilzed man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer. ~ Andrea Camilleri

You come to this place, mid-life. You don't know how you got here, but suddenly you're staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn't. When the midwife says, 'It's a boy,' where does the girl go? When you think you're pregnant, and you're not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines. ~ Hilary Mantel

Not what you would call a musical family, but my father used to play saxophone, and I discovered many genres of music when I was a child. ~ Rokia Traore

Is there anywhere else to sleep tonight ... Anywhere?' I pleaded.
There's Mei's office, but you'll have to sleep on the floor I'm afraid.' Mei was one of the Ward 9D dietitians.
'I'll sleep on the floor any day. I'm used to it back in the Islands,' I laughed tiredly.
I settled down on the floor. The three rugs I had brought to cushion my back worked surprisingly well. It was almost more comfortable than the thin mats on the cold concrete floors of the fales in Samoa. The idea of sleeping in someone's office was the best idea I had had all year. I decided that I would keep this secret to myself. ~ Ta'afuli Andrew Fiu

Everything he did, as long as you stayed in the village, whether shouting obscenities at passing children or sleeping in the cemetery, all would be remembered when they looked at you, they would say to themselves or to whomever they were with, It's his father, you know, the crazy one, the drunk, and they couldn't help but wonder what part of his madness had passed on to you, which part you had escaped. ~ Nick Flynn

It's funny; recently I've started to notice people's impersonations of me, and it's basically like a hyperactive child. ~ Dave Grohl

Her pretty name of Adina seemed to me to have somehow a mystic fitness to her personality.

Behind a cold shyness, there seemed to lurk a tremulous promise to be franker when she knew you better.

Adina is a strange child; she is fanciful without being capricious.

She was stout and fresh-coloured, she laughed and talked rather loud, and generally, in galleries and temples, caused a good many stiff British necks to turn round.

She had a mania for excursions, and at Frascati and Tivoli she inflicted her good-humoured ponderosity on diminutive donkeys with a relish which seemed to prove that a passion for scenery, like all our passions, is capable of making the best of us pitiless.

Adina may not have the shoulders of the Venus of Milo...but I hope it will take more than a bauble like this to make her stoop.

Adina espied the first violet of the year glimmering at the root of a cypress. She made haste to rise and gather it, and then wandered further, in the hope of giving it a few companions. Scrope sat and watched her as she moved slowly away, trailing her long shadow on the grass and drooping her head from side to side in her charming quest. It was not, I know, that he felt no impulse to join her; but that he was in love, for the moment, with looking at her from where he sat. Her search carried her some distance and at last she passed out of sight behind a bend in the villa wall.

I don't pretend to be s ~ Henry James

Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about ... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words. ~ Geoffrey Canada

If you look at the life of Jesus, that's an example of true worship. You know look at the stories, if you want to learn about real worship read Matthew through John. Seriously. You just read it and you will see the true level. You see when Jesus is in the boat and the storm comes when it comes and the winds are blowing and Jesus is sleeping in the boat and the disciples are freaking out. And Jesus wakes up and says "What you guys got is a problem, no?" and he commands the seas to be calm that's true worship. ~ Brian Johnson

When a child has no hope, a nation has no future. ~ Zell Miller

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family.
After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping."
"I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder."
Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?"
"It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat."
"Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness.
While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest s ~ Lisa Kleypas

Celebrate the birth of a girl child by planting 5 trees in your village. ~ Narendra Modi

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,
the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,
even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child. ~ Charles Dickens

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

Some kids are fine, but often I don't like what I see in child actors. My kids are young and they are already showing an interest, so I have to try to discourage them, squash that in them. ~ John Leguizamo

Comedy comes from pain, and no one knows that better than this woman Roseanne Barr - who was molested as a child. Uch. That poor molester. Roseanne never got over it. She felt violated. She had trust issues. She never got the candy he promised her. ~ Jeff Ross

As a child I became a confirmed believer in the ancient gods simply because as between the reality of fact and the reality f myth, I chose myth ... Myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth. ~ Kathleen Raine