I cannot consent to be separated from my son.  I can feel no enjoyment without my children;  with them I can regret nothing."
-MARIE ANTOINETTE
"You may despise your mother's leading-strings, but they are the manropes by which many youngsters have steadied the giddiness of youth, and saved themselves from lamentable falls."
-HERMAN MELVILLE
"There are two classes of travel-first class, and with children."
-ROBERT BENCHLEY
"The life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires."
-ARISTOTLE
"Being constantly with children was like wearing a pair of shoes that were expensive and too small.  She couldn't bear to throw them out, but they gave her blisters."
-BERYL BAINBRIDGE
"Ah, the patter of little feet around the house.  There's nothing like having a midget for a butler."
-W.C. FIELDS
"The peace of great changes be for you.  Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.  Tumble, Oh cubs--tomorrow belongs to you."
-CARL SANDBURG
"To children, childhood holds no particular advantage."
-KATHLEEN NORRIS
"I am not young enough to know everything."
-JAMES BARRIE
"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."
-ERMA BOMBECK
"Spirit enters flesh and for all it's worth charges into earth in birth after birth ever fresh and fresh."
-ROBERT FROST
"Just as inherit your mother's brown eyes, you inherit part of yourself."
-ALICE WALKER
"The god to whom little boys say their prayers has a face much like their mother's."
-SIR JAMES M. BARRIE
"The only time a woman wishes she were a year older is when she is expecting a baby."
-MARY MARSH
"To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while."
-HENRY WHEELER SHAW
"Prodigy:  a child who plays the piano when he ought to be in bed."
-J.B. MORTON
"I was not a child prodigy, because a child prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up."
-WILL ROGERS
"Instant availability without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play."
-LOTTE BAILYN
"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution, yet."
-MAE WEST
"The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have."
-RING LARDNER
"People have one thing in common:  they are all different."
-ROBERT ZEND
"The honeymoon is over when he phones that he'll be late for dinner-and she already left a note that it's in the refrigerator."
-BILL LAWRENCE
"Matrimony is the process by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had."
-FRANCIS RODMAN
"Heredity is what sets the parents of a teen-ager wondering about each other."
-CARYL RIVERS
"Why pay money to have your family tree traced;  go into politics and your opponents will do it for you."
-MARK TWAIN
"Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?"
-BARBRA STREISAND
"Heredity is the traits that a disobedient child gets from the other parent."
-LUTHER BURBANK
"I don't know who my grandfather was;  I am much more  concerned to know what his grandson will be."
-ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments;  there are only consequences."
-ROBERT B. INGERSOLL
"Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy."
-GROUCHO MARX
"One of the greatest pleasures of childhood is found in the mysteries which it hides from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small mythologies of its own."
-OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
