Nurturing Instincts Quotes

Children have an anxious concern for living beings, and the satisfaction of this instinct fills them with delight. It is therefore easy to interest them in taking care of plants and especially of animals. Nothing awakens foresight in a small child such as this. When he knows that animals have need of him, that little plants will dry up if he does not water them, he binds together with a new thread of love today's passing moments with those of the morrow.

And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way.

I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.

Maternal behavior helps when you have to be patient with nonverbal creatures.

I felt so proud to be having a baby and so excited. And I felt closer to other women - to my sisters, to my mom. I felt empowered, like, 'I've given birth. I did it! There's nothing I can't handle.' I've really enjoyed this time that I have taken to be with Suri, as well as the challenges of the first couple of months: feeding and pumping, learning to decipher what each cry means - is she hungry? Is she tired? Does she need a fresh diaper? - and figuring out how to really help her.

It's fun being pregnant at the same time as someone as prominent as Kim Kardashian. Seeing her beautiful body change and morph makes me remember mine is doing the same, and although it may not always feel beautiful, it really is.

Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport.

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously, as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

Crying babies are like good intentions: Both should be carried out immediately!

I was pregnant with my daughter when I started writing my first thriller, so I guess you could blame hormones.

I never used to like babies. I'd always thought if a baby were more like a chimpanzee, I'd have one

In general, I've found female protagonists more intriguing to work with than males. I cherish women and have always preferred their company, reveling in their perfumes, their contours, their finer-grained sensibilities, lunar intuitions, nurturing instincts and relatively unfettered emotions--although I'm certainly not unaware that there are plenty of neurotic, uptight, stupid women in the world.

... Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers.

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.

Solicitous care for living things affords satisfaction to one of the most lively instincts of the child's mind. Nothing is better calculated than this to awaken an attitude of foresight.