Heaven lies about us in our infancy. [ Wordsworth ]
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And Cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness.
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
* * * * * *
At length the man perceives it die away.
And fade into the light of common day. [ Wordsworth ]
Ignorance is a prolonged infancy only deprived of its charm. [ De Boufflers ]
The enthusiasm of old men is singularly like that of infancy. [ Gerard de Nerval ]
His sweetest dreams were still of that dear voice that soothed his infancy. [ Southey ]
The fragrant infancy of opening flowers flowed to my senses in that melting kiss. [ Southern ]
The second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe. [ Wm. Mountford ]
I scarcely exceed the middle age of man; yet between infancy and maturity I have seen ten revolutions! [ Lamartine ]
The sublimest canticle to be heard on earth is the stammering of the human soul on the lips of infancy. [ Victor Hugo ]
Those whom we call the ancients were in truth novices in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind. [ Prescott ]
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise. [ Emerson ]
For imitation is natural to man from his infancy. Man differs from other animals particularly in this, that he is imitative, and acquires his rudiments of knowledge in this way; besides, the delight in it is universal. [ Aristotle ]
It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul; it takes but an instant to kill him. [ Voltaire ]
Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]