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"In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War."
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"There was a danger in asking too much of a child, but the danger of asking too little was almost equal."

"Motherhood isn't just about making babies, it's about making lives and molding destinies."

"If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away."

"What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?"

"Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose? You want to ask,'Whose child is this?'"Rose chuckled."But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out."

"A child learns to be guilty when he is punished and scolded for damaging material objects."

"Start working on your child's mind. Start building your child's character. Raise your child as a human being, instead of raising boys and girls. Raise human beings with the religion of love in their hearts. Raise human beings with the language of compassion on their lips. Raise human beings with the color of joy on their face. Raise human beings with the force of bravery in their nerves. And these brave conscientious souls with the flames of compassion in their hearts shall one day change the course of human history."
Explore more quotes by Bill Bryson

"There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do."

"Linguist say parties in the conversation will tolerate silence for four seconds before interjecting anything, however unrelated."

"It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can."

"Worse still, it isn't actually necessary to look to space for petrifying danger. As we are about to see, Earth can provide plenty of danger of its own."

"It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively, that was merely an unintended side effect."

"When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn't wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on."

"There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person."

"If we should be worrying about anything to do with the future of English, it should not be that the various strands will drift apart but that they will grow indistinguishable. And what a sad, sad loss that would be."

"As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it."

"Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be."
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