Among the many wonderful memories, dreams, and countless warm feelings we have experienced when opening a beloved children’s book, there are the quotes that remain with us long after the pages have been turnt and the book closed. It is these quotes that we remember that help guide us into the people we will become. Below are 19 melancholy, though hopeful quotes from classic and postmodern children’s stories that are bound to bring a tear or two to your eye. Grab those tissues, you’re going to need them.
1. “Once you’ve grown up, you can never come back. Never.”
~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Source: Giphy
2. “And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”
~ Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are
Source: Giphy
3. “I wish that I could give you something, but I have nothing left… I am just an old stump.”
~ Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree
Source: Amazon
4. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Source: Giphy
5. “Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.”
~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
Source: Amazon
6. “The sad truth is the truth is sad.”
~ Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital (check out more Lemony Snicket quotes, here!)
Source: Giphy
7. “‘Where are the people?’ resumed the little prince at last. ‘It’s a little lonely in the desert…’
‘It is lonely when you’re among people, too,’ said the snake.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Source: Giphy
8. “Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.”
~ Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Source: Giphy
9. “We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”
~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Source: Amazon
10. “‘Why can’t you fly now, mother?’
‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way.’
‘Why do they forget the way?’
‘Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless. It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly.'”
~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Source: Giphy
11. “‘I might have known,’ said Eeyore. ‘After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’ The Social Round. Always something going on.'”
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Source: Giphy
12. “You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Source: Amazon
13. “She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there — like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”
~ Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia
Source: Giphy
14. “If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”
~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Source: Giphy
15. “Wilbur didn’t want food, he wanted love.”
~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
Source: Modern Farmer
16. “Dreams do come true. If only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Source: Giphy
17. “All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Source: Giphy
18. “He wasted his wishes on wishing.”
~ Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein
Source: Amazon
19. “The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside of him, half joy, half terrible sadness.”
~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Source: Giphy
Which childhood quotes bring tears to your eyes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv_XTYBcwrk
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Featured image via ArtsFon
h/t Bustle
