Childhood

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.

Warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

Childhood is Last Chance Gulch for happiness. After that, you know too much.

But childhood, prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in light out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy “forever.”

The two things that nearly all of us have thoroughly and really been through are childhood and youth. And though we would not have them back again on any account, we feel that they are both beautiful, because we have drunk them dry.

The man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him, and he will certainly miss him.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

GOLF IS A GAME IN WHICH YOU CAN CLAIM THE PRIVILEGES OF AGE AND RETAIN THE PLAYTHINGS OF CHILDHOOD.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

A simple child, dear brother Jim,

The Child is father of the Man.

At the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we’re all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

I have a little shadow that goes in and out

I was the giant great and still

In winter I get up at night

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I was a child and she was a child,

When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael: it took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.