Relationships and Family

We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “My God, my God—” I said to myself, “it’s the Children’s Crusade.”

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes .

Et, Ô ces voix d’enfants chantants dans la coupole!

Dieu créa l’homme, et ne le trouvant pas assez seul, il lui donne une compagne pour lui faire mieux sentir sa solitude .

The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage appear.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

The other day we had a long discourse with[Lady Orkney] about love; and she told us asaying . . . which I thought excellent, that inmen, desire begets love ; and in women, love begetsdesire .

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to theirParents, or the Country, and for Making ThemBeneficial to the Public.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

The children now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the slaves of their households. They no longer rise when an elder enters the room, they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up the dainties at the table, cross their legs and tyrannize over their pedagogues.

The Family is a petty despotism; . . . a school in which men learn to despise women and women to mistrust men (much more than is necessary); a slaughterhouse for children (the firstborn succumbing to unskilled treatment, the lastborn to neglect). . . . Unfortunately, we cannot as yet do without it; and therefore we put a good face on the matter by conferring upon it the conventional attribute of sacredness, and impudently proclaiming it the source of all the virtues it has well-nigh killed in us.

The first duty of a State is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attains years of discretion.

[ Of a girl before marriage :] As an apple reddens on the high bough; high atop the highest bough the apple pickers passed it by—no, not passed it by, but they could not reach it.

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses.

On this tenth day of June 1940 the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis à sa vue .

On ne Badine pas avec l’Amour .

On ne Badine pas avec l’Amour .

124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.

The curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

He knew only that the child was his warrant.