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Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.

Childhood

If there is anything that will endure
The eye of God, because it is still pure,
It is the spirit of a little child,
Fresh from his hand, and therefore undefiled.
Nearer the gate of Paradise than we,
Our children breathe its airs, its angels see;
And when they pray God hears their simple prayer,
Yea, even sheathes his sword, in judgment bare.
Stoddard.—The Children’s Prayer.

O eloquent child.
Emerson.—Poems: Threnody, Line 37.

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.
Holmes.—The Poet of the Breakfast Table, Chap. I.

You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
Holmes.—The Boys.

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.
Longfellow.—Children.

Children are the keys of Paradise.
… They alone are good and wise,
Because their thoughts, their very lives are prayer.
Stoddard.—The Children’s Prayer.