“Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeplyMust take great care they do not, Paddle too deeply.'Thus spake the awful aging coupleWhose heart the years had turned to rubble.But the little children, to save any bother,Let it in at one ear and out at the other.”
“Better to stop one paddle short than one too far.”
“The most insidious of the premature responsibilities that may be foisted onto some children is the expectation that the child is somehow supposed to take care of his parents, rather than the other way around. Parents who were themselves raised with too little attention given to their own early feelings, if they have not worked out the resulting emotional problems in subsequent years, often look forward to having children of their own so that the children will make them happy. (81)”
“Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things that children usually do to amuse themselves. I never aged out of it.”
“Most people don't want to be saved. Besides, if you keep bailing everybody out, they'll never learn to paddle on their own.”
“The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own. ”