165 Children's Literature Quotes

Following is our list of children's literature quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about love.

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Famous Children's Literature Quotes

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is no such thing as children’s literature. — N. V. M. Gonzalez

A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at. — Jan Brett

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest. — C. S. Lewis

There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all. — Jackie Kennedy

The books from which [children] learn must reflect movement and change and all of the infinite possibilities of minds at liberty. — Virginia Hamilton

For children in their most impressionable years, there is, in fantasy, the highest of stimulating and educational powers. — Arthur Rackham

Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun. — R. L. Stine

Better to lose a book to a child, than to lose a child to illiteracy. — Richard Allington

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift. — Kate DiCamillo

A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy. — Astrid Lindgren

Reading to kids is to ordinary reading what jazz is to a string quartet. — Sean Wilentz

And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things. — Maurice Sendak

Literature is a cake with many toys baked inside--and even if you find them all, if you don't enjoy the path that leads you to them, it will be a hollow accomplishment. — Cam'ron

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? — Walter Dean Myers

Short Children's Literature Quotes

  • Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. — Anthony Browne
  • Literature has the power to change lives, minds, and hearts. — Cam'ron
  • Literature is the question minus the answer. — Roland Barthes
  • Enter into children's play and you will find the place where their minds, hearts, and souls meet. — Virginia Axline
  • Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself. — George Bernard Shaw
Children's literature quote Don't just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to questio
Don't just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

Inspirational Quotes

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there. — David Bowie

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life. — Kahlil Gibran

Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly - Paulo Coelho

Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly — Paulo Coelho

Children's literature quote While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.
While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. — Helen Keller

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds — Paul the Apostle

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. — John Quincy Adams

Children's literature quote A child can teach an adult three things: To be happy for no reason, to always be curious, to fight t
A child can teach an adult three things: To be happy for no reason, to always be curious, to fight tirelessly for something.

If God is for us, who can be against us? — Paul the Apostle

The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE. — Winston Churchill

I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them. — Madam C. J. Walker

Every day may not be good... but there's something good in every day — Alice Morse Earle

Love Quotes

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affectionBuddha

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. - Mother Theresa

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. — Mother Theresa

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. — Lao Tzu

Children's literature quote Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. — G. K. Chesterton

I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. - Roy Croft

I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. — Roy Croft

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. — Albert Schweitzer

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. - William Shakespeare

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. — William Shakespeare

Love, friendship, laughter... Some of the best things in life really are free. - Bob Marley

Love, friendship, laughter... Some of the best things in life really are free. — Bob Marley

If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were. — Anonymous

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. — Mother Teresa

Friendship Quotes

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. — Ann Landers

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart — Eleanor Roosevelt

Children's literature quote Once you're grown up you can't come back.
Once you're grown up you can't come back.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. — Mother Teresa

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones — John Lennon

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears. — John Lennon

Children's literature quote Dont handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Dont handicap your children by making their lives easy.

A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. — St. Basil

The fidelity of a dog is a precious gift demanding no less binding moral responsibilities than the friendship of a human being. — Konrad Lorenz

To be honest with you, I don't have the words to make you feel better, but I do have the arms to give you a hug, ears to listen to whatever you want to talk about, and I have a heart; a heart that's aching to see you smile again. — Laura Ortiz

Be careful who you call your friends. I’d rather have four quarters than one hundred pennies. — Al Capone

Literary Quotes

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. — Franz Kafka

What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. — Joseph Pulitzer

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. — Anais Nin

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. - Samuel Johnson

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. — Samuel Johnson

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work. — Johannes V. Jensen

Children's literature quote Children are not a distraction from more inportant work. They are the most important work.
Children are not a distraction from more inportant work. They are the most important work.

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work. — Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Women need to become literary "criminals," break the literary laws and reinvent their own, because the established laws prevent women from presenting the reality of their lives. — Kathy Acker

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience. — Robert Morgan

Children Literature Quotes

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. — George Carlin

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. — Roald Dahl

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you. - Roald Dahl

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you. — Roald Dahl

Children's literature quote To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children... t
To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children... to leave the world a better place... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

'Oh, yes,' nodded Pollyanna emphatically. 'He said he felt better right away, that first day he thought to count 'em. He said if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it - some. — Eleanor Porter

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. — Margery Williams

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Children's literature quote Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.
Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. — Roald Dahl

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing. — E. B. White

A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marvellous idea to paper, does something else of a quite different kind, so as to acquire new and rich experience. — Joan Aiken

Childrens Book Quotes

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. - Malala Yousafzai

One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. — Malala Yousafzai

Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart. — A. A. Milne

Children's literature quote If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much mon
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony. — Mem Fox

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. — Dr. Seuss

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret... All the best people are! - Lewis Carroll

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret... All the best people are! — Lewis Carroll

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be. — Robert Munsch

In Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don't trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings. — Bashar al-Assad

Anything can happen, child. Anything can be. — Shel Silverstein

Books For Kids Quotes

When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate. — Mem Fox

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. — Harrison Ford

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. — Frederick Douglass

Children's literature quote Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.
Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly. — Francis Bacon

I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job. — Rick Riordan

Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. — Anna Quindlen

The more you read, the more things you will know. — Dr. Seuss

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. — Harry S. Truman

If you don't remember childhood and you idealize it, you can't write books for kids because they're not real. Kids pick that up. — Robert Munsch

Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books - for kids - because they're still open to new ideas. — Gary Paulsen

Reading Books To Children Quotes

I hope children will be happy with the books I've written, and go on to be readers all of their lives. — Beverly Cleary

My alma mater was books, a good library. — Malcolm X

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free. — Kirk Douglas

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. — Charles Baudelaire

As the child approaches a new text he is entitled to an introduction so that when he reads, the gist of the... story can provide some guide for a fluent reading. — Marie Clay

A Message to Children Who Have Read This Book - When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY. — Roald Dahl

You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. — Confucius

As parents, the most important thing we can do is read to our children early and often. Reading is the path to success in school and life. When children learn to love books, they learn to love learning. — Laura Bush

This year, more people will use cocaine than will read a book to their children. — Steve Carell

I don't want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read. — Astrid Lindgren

Children Reading Quotes

Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better. — Magda Gerber

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. — Albert Einstein

The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are. — Ludwig van Beethoven

We learn... 10% of what we read 20% of what we hear 30% of what we see 50% of what we both hear and see 70% of what is discussed 80% of what we experience personally 95% of what we teach to someone else — William Glasser

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. — Gustave Flaubert

You have to convince the adults that if a child is to learn his culture, he or she will have to see his mother and father reading about it, and explaining it to him. Then it gets a legitimacy it otherwise would never have. Until then, his learning is limited. — John Henrik Clarke

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. — Keith Richards

Experts say that if children can't read by the end of the fifth grade, they lose self-confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to enter the juvenile justice system. — Dirk Kempthorne

What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree. - Elizabeth George Speare

What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree. — Elizabeth George Speare

Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read. — Marilyn Jager Adams

Literacy For Children Quotes

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. - Kofi Annan

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. — Kofi Annan

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp. — J. K. Rowling

These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country. — Harry Belafonte

One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children. — Carl Sagan

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. — Katherine Paterson

Words are the voice of the heart. — Confucius

Love of books is the best of all. — Jackie Kennedy

So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky. — William James

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. — Mary Ellen Chase

Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account. — Hugh Mackay

People Writing About Children's Literature

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Cam'ron

Cam'ron
quotes on love, leadership and game

22 377
Read quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
quotes on love

1772 14221
Read quotes by Jan Brett

Jan Brett
quotes on life, friendship and education

25 97
Read quotes by C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis
quotes on purpose, faith and love

1957 19120
Read quotes by Jackie Kennedy

Jackie Kennedy
quotes on life, love and morhood

70 2149
Read quotes by Virginia Hamilton

Virginia Hamilton

9 126

More Children's Literature Quotes

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant. — Neil Gaiman

Art is humanity's most essential, most universal language. It is not a frill, but a necessary part of communication. The quality of civilization can be measured through its music, dance, drama, architecture, visual art and literature. We must give our children knowledge and understanding of civilization's most profound works. — Ernest L. Boyer

Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo. — P. L. Travers

I loved The Wind in the Willows. ... Walt Disney should be sued for cheapening it as he did. Imagine it, Mickey Mousing all those nice characters. I'm surprised he didn't do it with the New Testament. — Tasha Tudor

Children’s literature must build a bridge between the colorful dream world full of fantasy and illusion, and a tougher real world full of twists and turns. The child armed with the torch of knowledge, awareness and guidance must cross this bridge and set foot to the intense harshness of the bigger world. — Samad Behrangi

Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. — James M. Barrie

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. — Roald Dahl

Humor is the oxygen of children's literature. There's a lot of competition for children's time, but even kids who hate to read want to read a funny book. — Sid Fleischman

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people. — Margaret Wise Brown

People didn't make life, so they can't destroy it. Even if we were to wipe out every bit of life in the world, we can't touch the place life comes from. Whatever made the plants and animals and people spring up in the first place will always be there, and life will spring up again. — Jeanne DuPrau

The only books that work are those which fly through the air - the ones you let happen, not make happen. — Rosemary Wells

Quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times, a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own. — Margaret Wise Brown

A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion. — Bruno Bettelheim

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon. — Anton Chekhov

The work of one author or artist may stimulate another author or artist to push the edge, to take the risk, to go where the field hasn't gone before. The result -very exciting children's literature and art ... exciting both for the professional and for the intended audience, the children. — Sayings

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth. — Dr. Seuss

Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun. — Mignon McLaughlin

a good deal of childhood is strong stuff for adults and totally unsuitable for children. — Philippa Pearce

By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness. — Agnes Repplier

He was very concerned about his children potentially being kidnapped or attached, and that's why they were covered up. When he went to Berlin zoo, there were 200 photographers. — Martin Bashir

...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child. — Katherine Paterson

In the great green room, there was a telephone And a red balloon And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon. — Margaret Wise Brown

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory. — Katharine Sergeant Angell White

There is nothing more important than writing well for the young, if literature is to have a continuance ... They will inherit the earth; and nothing that we value will endure in the world unless they can be persuaded to value it too. — Jill Paton Walsh

Books that children read but once are of scant service to them; those that have really helped to warm our imaginations and to train our faculties are the few old friends we know so well that they have become a portion of our thinking selves. — Agnes Repplier

They [Narnia] are, perhaps, the greatest classics of children’s literature of the twentieth century. — Douglas Gresham

Some days are like that. Even in Australia. — Judith Viorst

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and - SNAP - the job's a game! — Julie Andrews

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence. — Orson Scott Card

I also really liked playing Mr. Tumnus in 'Narnia'. I got to play my favorite character in children's literature, which I loved. You don't get the chance to do that in other jobs. — James McAvoy

I do not believe in guilt, moderation or dull pencils. — Nancy Lam

In Conclusion

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