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Robert Christy, comp. Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages. 1887.

Child

A child of a year old sucks milk from the heel. (By running round in the open air.)Spanish.

A child’s back must be bent early.Danish.

A child’s sorrow is short lived.Danish.

A child may have too much of his mother’s blessing.

A child that can walk is a Jama (god) to the child in the cradle.Tamil.

A chip of the old block.

A naughty child must be roughly rocked.

A pet child has many names.Danish.

A Sunday’s child never dies of the plague.French.

A suspicious parent makes an artful child.Haliburton.

As each one wishes his children to be, so they are.Terence.

Better the child cry than the old man.Danish.

Children and chicken must ever be picking.

Children and drunken men speak the truth.Danish.

Children and fools are prophets.French.

Children and fools have merry lives.

Children and fools tell truth.

Children are certain cares but uncertain comforts.

Children are poor men’s riches.

Children are to be cheated with cockles and men with oaths.Lysander.

Children are what the mothers are.Landor.

Children are what they are made.French.

Children cry for nuts and apples, and old men for silver and gold.

Children, fools, and drunkards tell the truth.German.

Children have wide ears and long tongues.

Children increase the cares of life but mitigate the remembrance of death.

Children like tender osiers take the bow,
And as they first are fashioned always grow.Juvenal.

Children married, cares increase.Spanish.

Children must be circumvented with words, men with oaths.Lysander.

Children pick up words as pigeons pease,
And utter them again as God shall please.

Children should be seen, not heard.

Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they grow up.

Children tell in the highway what they hear by the fireside.Portuguese.

Children when little make parents fools, when great, mad.

Child’s pig, father’s hog.

Every man is to be envied who is fortunate with his children.Euripides.

From children expect childish acts.Danish.

From many children and little bread good Lord deliver us.

Give a child till he craves and a dog while his tail doth wag and you’ll have a fair dog but foul knave.

Give a child his will and a whelp his fill and neither will thrive.

Give to a pig when it grunts and to a child when it cries, and you’ll have a fine pig and a bad child.Danish.

Gold must be beaten and a child scourged.

Gude bairns get broken brows.

Happy is the child whose father went to the devil; i.e., died rich.

He knows not what love is that has not children.Italian.

He remembers his ancestors but forgets to feed his children.

He that does not beat his child will afterwards beat his own breasts.Turkish.

He that loves his child chastises him.Dutch.

He who hath children hath neither kindred nor friends.

How did you rear so many children? By being fondest of the little ones.Portuguese.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child.Shakespeare.

I hate all children of precocious talent.Cicero.

If the child cries let the mother hush it, if it will not be hushed, let it cry.Spanish.

If the child does not cry, the mother does not understand it.Russian.

If the child does not cry they give him not suck.Modern Greek.

If you have wicked children of what use is money, and if good, again what use is it.Turkish.

Ill bairns are ay best heard at hame.

It is a wise child that knows its own father.German, Spanish, Danish.

Let a child have its will and it will not cry.Danish.

Little children and headaches, great children and heartaches.Italian.

Little children, little sorrows; big children, great sorrows.Italian.

Male children are the pillars of a house.Greek.

Many children and little bread is a painful pleasure.Spanish.

Married life without children is as the earth deprived of the sun’s rays.Latin.

No ape but swears he has the handsomest children.

Of glasses and children one never has too many.

Of listening children have your fears,
For little pitchers have great ears.Dutch.

One is always somebody’s child, that is a comfort.

Our neighbor’s children are always the worst.German.

Pretty children sing pretty songs.Danish.

Quickly toothed and quickly go,
Quickly will mother have woe.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

The best horse needs breaking and the aptest child needs teaching.

The burnt child dreads the fire.

The child is father to the man.Wordsworth.

The child names the father, the mother knows him.Livonian.

The child saith nothing but what he heard at the fireside.

The child should be instructed in the arts that will be useful to the man.Spartan King.

The child that trembles at a rod will never dare to look upon a sword.Theoderic.

The child who gets a step-mother also gets a step-father.Greek.

The dearer the child, the sharper must be the rod.Danish.

The eternal child dwells in fine natures.De Quincey.

The two best books to a child are a good mother’s face and life.

There are no children now-a-days.French.

There is not so much comfort in having children as there is sorrow in parting with them.

Thy child that is no child leave upon the water and let him swim.

’Tis better to bind your children to you by gentleness than fear.

To save a father is a child’s chief honor.Byron.

Train up a child in the way he should go.

What children hear at home soon flies abroad.

What the parents spin the children must reel.German.

When children stand quiet they have done some harm.

When the child cuts its teeth death is on the watch.Spanish.

When the child is man we burn the rod.

When the child is christened come god fathers enough.French.