And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.
Orson Scott CardRead
It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal, direct engagement with a child over abstract feelings of care for humanity.
Orson Scott Card's quote illustrates the profound impact of nurturing a child in a personal and intimate setting. It contrasts the simplicity of claiming love and responsibility for all humanity with the intricate, rewarding experience of actively participating in a child's life. Through tangible experiences, such as holding a child and witnessing their development, we cultivate genuine connections that foster happiness and goodness, thus enriching both their lives and our own.
Themes
ChildrenNurturingFamilyHappinessLove
In practice
Example use cases
In a parenting workshop, I quoted Orson Scott Card to highlight the importance of hands-on parenting.
More from Orson Scott Card
All quotes →The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.
Orson Scott CardRead
Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, Where there's smoke there's fire, when the saying should have been, Where there's scandalous lies there's always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.
Orson Scott CardRead
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
Orson Scott CardRead
You take a step, then another. That's the journey. But to take a step with your eyes open is not a journey at all, it's a remaking of your own mind.
Orson Scott CardRead
I've had your tears with mine, and you've had mine with yours. I think that's more intimate even than a kiss.
Orson Scott CardRead
Similar quotes
Women know the way to rear up children (to be just). They know a simple, merry, tender knack of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, and stringing pretty words that make no sense. And kissing full sense into empty words.
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningRead
There is no word for feeling nostalgic about the future, but that's what a parent's tears often are, a nostalgia for something that has not yet occurred. They are the pain of hope, the helplessness of hope, and finally, the surrender to hope.
Michael Ian BlackRead
It can't hurt to go to the people you love, whose blood type courses through your veins and whose DNA, from a certain angle, contains many of the same markings as yours. You don't have to take their advice, but let them share their version of solutions to life's difficulties. Good or bad - it could be interesting.
Carrie FisherRead
Everything I thought I'd hate about having children - the crying, the screaming - nothing fazes me. I love it all and it's relaxed me.
Elton JohnRead
I'm giving away my family's story. Who owns the family's story? I don't. But you could turn it around and ask, 'Who is to deny me to write my family's story?' I have hurt people, but I don't think in a dangerous way. But you can't tell.
Karl Ove KnausgardRead
Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination.
Andrew SolomonRead