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I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law’s kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything. I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a “good” child is one who does not disturb mother’s nap and a “good” man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!

 

Robert A. Heinlein

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[About his first-born child] My mother looked at it and said, "Oh, how precious!" I don't know why she said it. Well, I didn't know then. I know now, because my mother put a curse on me. A long time ago, I remember when I was a child what she said, and I later found out that mothers, all mothers, put a curse on their children. They say, "I hope, when you get married, you have some children who act exactly the same way that you act." And this curse WORKS! I mean, it started with that child! My wife and I have not been intellectuals since. Oh, my wife was pretty good for a while, but it didn't last that long. It didn't last two years.

 

Bill Cosby

 

He closed his eyes and tried to recover in his imagination the mudbrick walls and reed roof of her stories, the garden of prickly pear, the chickens scampering for the feed scattered by the little barefoot girl. And behind that child, in the doorway, her face obscured by shadow, he searched for a second woman, the woman from whom his mother had come into the world. When my mother was dying in the hospital, he thought, when she knew her end was coming, it was not me she looked to but someone who stood behind me: her mother or the ghost of her mother. To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her hand and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.

 

J. M. Coetzee

 

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.... The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.

 

Daniel Berrigan

 

Fair and sweet is our Heavenly Mother in the sight of our souls; precious and lovely are the Gracious Children in the sight of our Heavenly Mother, with mildness and meekness, and all the fair virtues that belong to children in Nature. For of nature the Child despaireth not of the Mother’s love, of nature the Child presumeth not of itself, of nature the Child loveth the Mother and each one of the other. These are the fair virtues, with all other that be like, wherewith our Heavenly Mother is served and pleased.

 

Julian of Norwich

 

Now Miss Lucy, you will hear what Mother thinks about your Public Speaking. Mother said she had rather you would marry and have a pair [of] twin babies every year. She did not say how many years. Mother cannot bear to think of your Preaching or Lecturing. She thinks it is a wrong course for you to take, says if you go to Lecturing you will fix it so you can’t keep school. Mother wants you should Teach, she thinks you would do the most good that way. You will want to know [my] mind. I don’t know what to tell you. You know it will make much talk in our quarter of the World. You will do that which seems right in your own eyes. I suppose, to be honest, I like mother’s plan better than yours. You are of age to [do] that which you think is your duty. Mother says she cannot find no place where Christ ever sent Women to Preach. We shall want to hear from you as soon as you get this, you will write what you think about Mother’s plan.

 

Lucy Stone