CHANGE
Even nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
—Charles F. Kettering
I’m 100 percent for progress. It’s all this change I’m against.
—A politician
There is nothing permanent except change.
—Herodotus
Lord, give me the grace to recognize the things which cannot be changed, courage to change those which can, and wisdom to know the difference.
The world seems to be changing so fast nowadays you couldn’t stay wrong all the time even if you tried.
To change and to improve are two different things.
—German proverb
CHARACTER
The Stony Brook School on Long Island, New York, is a Christian preparatory school for boys founded in 1921 by Frank E. Gaebelein. On his retirement in 1963 he was succeeded by his son, Donn E. Gaebelein. Inscribed on the school’s seal are these words: “Character before Career.”
The best way to teach character is to have it around the house.
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay
There are four types of character: easy to provoke and easy to appease—his loss is canceled by his gain; hard to provoke and hard to appease—his gain is canceled by his loss; hard to provoke and easy to appease—he is a saintly man; easy to provoke and hard to appease—he is a wicked man.
—Jewish Mishnah
The best index to a man’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.
—Abigail Van Buren
Much may be known of a man’s character by what excites his laughter.
—Johann von Goethe
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him or to him.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
During the Second World War the troop ship Dorchester went down off the coast of England. The story of how the four chaplains aboard gave their lifejackets to sailors and soldiers is now a national legend. They were last seen linked arm in arm with each other, praying as the ship sank. In 1974 this incredible act of faith and bravery was memorialized in a commemorative United States postal stamp. But the real story didn’t end in a brave act.
Protestant chaplain Clark V. Poling wrote his parents just before the ill-fated voyage. “Pray for me. Pray not that I will be safe. War is never safe. Pray only that I will be an adequate man.”
—Edward L. Hayes
An executive in the Midwest, known for his ability to hire good people, explained his method this way: “The criteria I use to pick good people are first, character, then, intelligence, and third, experience.” Most executives reverse the order. But a really bright person will pick up experience quickly.
I’ve met a lot of leaders in the Army who were very competent—but they didn’t have character.… I’ve also met a lot of leaders who had superb character but who lacked competence.… To lead in the twenty-first century … you will be required to have both character and competence.
—General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
It is a mistake to assume that a man is worth a lot of money just because he has it.
The size of a man is determined by the depth of his convictions, the height of his ambitions, the breadth of his mercy, and the reach of his love.
—D. N. Jackson
The test of real character is what a man does when he is tired.
—Winston Churchill
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it, but the tree is the real thing.
Circumstances do not make a man; they reveal him.
—John Hubbard
D. L. Moody was once asked, “What is character?” Moody replied, “Character is what a man is in the dark.”
It’s not the force of the gale but the set of the sail that determines the way we go.
People are known by the way they walk, talk, and balk.
Your character is what God knows you to be; your reputation is what you think you are.
What you love and what you hate reveal what you are.
The size of a man is measured by what it takes to upset him.
The test of your character is what it takes to stop you.
—Bob Jones
Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings and fly, those who cheer may curse tomorrow; only one thing endures—character.
—Horace Greeley
See what a man goes after here and you can usually tell where he’s going hereafter.
If you are going to be anybody, be yourself.
The loose character usually winds up in a tight place.
Some people fall for everything and stand for nothing.
Character is determined by choice, not by opinion.
—Aristotle
CHILD DISCIPLINE
Without discipline, you cannot hope to teach your child to be a respectful, competent, and responsible adult.
—J. Allen Peterson
It is better to make your son cry than to cry over him.
—Arabic proverb
Weary of the constant disorder of her sons’ room, the mother laid down the law. For every item she had to pick up off the floor the boys would have to pay her a nickel. At the end of the week, she informed the boys that they owed her $1.05. They paid up promptly and gave her a tip of fifty cents and a note which read, “Thanks, Mom. Keep up the good work.”
—Family Concern
A small boy wondered if life is as difficult for other small boys as it is for him. He explained it this way: “If I’m noisy, they give me a spanking. If I’m quiet, they take my temperature.”
Some children in a family found that their misconduct finally caught up with them. And their father was mad at them. The children at night prayed about their relationship to their father. Then the next morning they put this sign on their parents’ bedroom door: “Be kind to your children, and they will be kind to you. Yours truly, God.”
On the subway I got up and gave my seat to a lady who was holding onto a strap. She was rather surprised and said, “Why did you do that?” Seeing that she was incapable of understanding a spiritual reason, I said to her, “Madam, I tell you ever since I was a little boy, I have had an infinite respect for a woman with a strap in her hand.”
—Fulton J. Sheen
The best way to straighten out some youngsters is by bending them over your knee.
A pat on the back develops character, if administered young enough, often enough, and low enough.
John Ruskin wrote in his Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts in My Past Life that his mother had listed many chapters of the Bible for him to learn as a child. “And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further knowledge in later life … this maternal installation of my mind in that property of chapters is very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my education.”
Children, like canoes, are more easily controlled if paddled from the rear.
In a park in Los Angeles I saw a full-grown tree that had grown rather crooked. It was anything but growing straight up. The strangest thing about the situation was that someone had placed an upright stick or pole near it and tied them together with ropes, but the tree had grown out so far from the place where the trunk came out of the ground that there was a lot of distance between the pole and the tree—perhaps a yard or two. It was too late!
How often is this true in the “rearing” of children. Parents will let their child run wild the first ten or fifteen years of their lives, and then when they try to correct them or straighten them, they find that it is too late.
—Roy B. Zuck
Parents who do not carry out their duty of instruction by example fail to assume their responsibility in a manner which is detrimental to our Christian society. The plain and simple maxims of the Bible contain the essential rules which govern human conduct.
—J. Edgar Hoover
If you do not teach your child the ways of the Lord, the Devil will teach them the ways of sin.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
The best mother is the one who stays on speaking terms with God and on spanking terms with her children.
Modern parents divide their time between worrying over how their children will turn out and when they will turn in.
As a young Frenchman pushed his son’s stroller down the street, the youngster howled with rage. “Please, Bernard, control yourself,” the father said quietly. “Easy there, Bernard, keep calm.”
“Congratulations, Monsieur,” said a woman who had been watching. “You know just how to speak to infants—calmly and gently.” Then she said, “So the little fellow’s named Bernard?”
“No, Madame,” corrected the father. “He’s named André. I’m Bernard.”
The man who remembers what he was taught at mother’s knee was probably bent over it at the time.
—Bill Ireland
Too many mothers use switches on everything in the house but their kids.
It used to be Papa dealt out a stern code of discipline to Junior. Then the electric razor took away his razor strap, furnaces took away the woodshed, and tax worries took away his hair and the hairbrush. That’s why kids are running wild today. Dad ran out of weapons.
—Pulpit Helps
CHILD REARING
Someone asked a farmer, “How do you have such beautiful sheep?” “I take care of the lambs,” he replied.
Interest your kids in bowling. Get them off the streets and into the alleys.
—Don Rickles
If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
—Jacquelyn Kennedy
The most influential of educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home.
—William Temple
If a parent neglects to give a child love, no one else can substitute for that gap. The child will suffer. Parental love is of primary importance.… a parent can never give too much love to a child.
—Kay Kuzma
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant—and let the air out of the tires.
—Dorothy Parker
No success can compensate for failure in the home.
—David O. McKay
The most valuable gift you can give your family is a good example.
The best things you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
—Sydney J. Harris
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
—Dennis Waitley
One of John F. Kennedy’s favorite anecdotes concerned French General Louis Lyautey. After World War I, the general asked his gardener to plant an oak tree in a particular part of his estate. The gardener noted that the tree the general had chosen was slow growing and wouldn’t reach maturity for nearly a century. The general replied, “In that case, there is no time to lose. Plant it this afternoon.”
No man ever really finds out what he believes in until he begins to instruct his children.
—Francis Xavier
Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.
—Francis Xavier
Raising a child is very much like building a skyscraper. If the first few stories are slightly out of line, no one will notice. But when the building is eighteen or twenty stories high, everyone will see that it tilts.
Children are natural mimics—they act like their fathers or mothers in spite of every attempt to teach them good manners.
A woman was calling on a friend whose children were brought in. The caller said, evidently with no thought of the meaning of her words, “Oh, I’d give my life to have two such children,” to which the mother with subdued earnestness replied, “That’s exactly what it cost.”
Parents are prone to give their children everything except the one thing they need most. That is time; time for listening, time for understanding, time for helping, and time for guiding. It sounds simple, but in reality it is the most difficult and the most sacrificial task of parenthood.
—Emma Kidd Hulbert
If we paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weeds.
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow men, we engrave on these tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.
—Daniel Webster
Before your child has come to seven,
Teach him well the way to heaven;
Better still the truth will thrive,
If he knows it when he’s five;
Best of all if at your knee
He learns it when he’s only three.
—Alliance Weekly
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity.
—Jean Paul Richter
Recipe for Preserving Children
1 large grassy field
½ dozen children
2 or 3 small dogs
A pinch of brook or pebbles
Mix children and dogs well together and put them in field, stirring constantly. Pour brook over pebbles; sprinkle field with flowers; spread under a deep blue sky and bake in the sun. When brown, remove and set to cool in a bathtub.
To assist in your quest to be good parents, here are ten commands for guiding your children.
1. Teach them, using God’s Word (Deut. 6:4–9)
2. Tell them what’s right and wrong (1 Kings 1:6)
3. See them as gifts from God (Ps. 127:3)
4. Guide them in godly ways (Prov. 22:6)
5. Discipline them (Prov. 29:17)
6. Love them unconditionally (Luke 15:11–32)
7. Do not provoke them to wrath (Eph. 6:4)
8. Earn their respect by example (1 Tim. 3:4)
9. Provide for their physical needs (1 Tim. 5:8)
10. Pass your faith along to them (2 Tim. 1:5).
—J. David Branon
Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.
If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
—Haim Ginott
Someone once said, “Sometimes you can straighten out a youngster by bending him over.”
A woman once wrote Gypsy Smith after an evangelistic campaign to tell him she had been converted as a result of one of his messages. She said, “I believe the Lord wants me to preach the Gospel, Brother Smith, but the trouble is that I have twelve children to raise! What shall I do?” She received this letter in reply: “My dear lady, I am happy to hear that you have been saved and feel called to preach, but I am even more delighted to know that God has already provided you with a congregation of twelve.” The new convert got the point!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great English poet, was once talking with a man who told him that he did not believe in giving children any religious instruction whatsoever. His theory was that the child’s mind should not be prejudiced in any direction, but when he came to years of discretion, he should be permitted to choose his religious opinions for himself. Coleridge said nothing, but after a while he asked his visitor if he would like to see his garden. The man said he would, and Coleridge took him out into the garden, where only weeds were growing. The man looked at Coleridge in surprise, and said, “Why, this is not a garden! There are nothing but weeds here!”
“Well, you see,” answered Coleridge, “I did not wish to infringe upon the liberty of the garden in any way. I was just giving the garden a chance to express itself and to choose its own production.”
—E. Owen Kellum Jr.
Someone has said, “A man’s character and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding that was done during the growing season.”
Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children.
They pass so quickly, the days of youth,
And the children change so fast,
And soon they harden in the most,
And the plastic years are past.
Then shape their lives while they are young,
This be our prayer, our aim,
That every child we meet shall bear
The imprint of His name.
Strange as it seems, spare the rod and you get a beat generation.
Blessed is the child who has someone who believes in him, to whom he can carry his problems unafraid.
Blessed is the child who is allowed to pursue his curiosity into every worthwhile field of information.
Blessed is the child who has someone who understands that childhood’s griefs are real and call for understanding and sympathy.
Blessed is the child who has about him those who realize his need of Christ as Savior and will lead him patiently and prayerfully to the place of acceptance.
Blessed is the child whose love of the true, the beautiful, and the good has been nourished through the years.
Blessed is the child whose innate imagination has been turned into channels of creative effort.
Blessed is the child whose efforts to achieve have found encouragement and kindly commendation.
Blessed is the child who has learned freedom from selfishness through responsibility and cooperation with others.
—Parents’ Magazine
CHILDREN
A mother was getting her children off to school. A man asked her, “If you had to do it again, would you have children?”
“Of course,” she said.
He said, “You would?”
“Certainly,” she replied, “but not the same ones!”
Children are a great comfort in your old age—and they help you reach it faster too.
—Lionel M. Kauffman
Children are the only earthly possessions we can take with us to heaven.
—Robert C. Savage
Most things have an escape clause—but children are forever.
—Lewis Grizzard
Many years from now it will not matter what my worldly possessions had been. What will matter is that I was important … in the life of a child.
Horace Mann, in the early days of the colonies, was asked what a certain little Christian chapel was worth. He replied philosophically, “A million dollars if through it one boy is saved.” It is recorded that one of the board members protested, “That’s too much to pay for just one boy.” The old educator stuck to his guns, saying, “Not if it’s my boy that you save.”
While discussing the economy with a friend one day, I asked him if he knew what the gross national product was that year. My ten-year-old son, who was listening, chimed in, “Spinach.”
—Reader’s Digest
The greatest natural poets are children, says A. M. Sullivan, a New Jersey poet. They see things in a wonderful, original, and imaginative way. As proof, Sullivan offers these images from kids:
The stream comes by my house, and when it turns, it stumbles.
When you open the window at night, you let the dark in and it gets all over everything.
Yesterday I saw the wind. It was playing in my dog’s hair.
Oil on the pavement looks like a dead rainbow.
—Bits & Pieces
A teacher of ten- and eleven-year-old boys in Germany would take off his top hat and bow before the boys in deference to them. “Why do you do that?” someone asked him. He answered, “Who knows what one of these boys may become?” One of them was named Martin Luther.
Children will tend to adopt the beliefs of those whom they instinctively recognize as happy, and of no others.
—W. E. Hockin
A man finds out what is meant by a spitting image when he tries to feed cereal to his infant.
—Imogene Fey
Isaac Watts was saved at about the age of nine. His hymns have lifted the hearts of millions. Jonathan Edwards, whose clear testimony and dynamic preaching stirred all of New England for God, was converted when only seven. Matthew Henry was brought to Christ at the age of eleven, and through his many years of study of God’s Word he produced his well-known commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. Thousands of other men and women have been brought to the foot of the cross when they were young and their whole life could be dedicated to Christ.
—Our Daily Bread
CHILDREN’S FEARS
One summer night during a severe thunderstorm, a mother was tucking her small son into bed. She was about to turn the light off when he asked in a trembling voice, “Mommy, will you stay with me all night?” Smiling, the mother gave him a warm, reassuring hug and said tenderly, “I can’t dear. I have to sleep in Daddy’s room.” A long silence followed. At last, it was broken by a shaky voice saying, “The big sissy!”