Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Child
The childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day.
Milton.—Paradise Regained, Book IV.
The child is genuine, you may trace
Throughout the sire’s transmitted face.
Green.—The Spleen, Line 11.
Oft too the mind well pleased surveys,
Its progress from its childish days;
Sees how the current upwards ran,
And reads the child o’er in the man.
Lloyd.—Epi. to Coleman, Line 17.
Did the man enjoy
In after life, the visions of the boy?
Crabbe.—Tales of the Hall, Book IX.
The child is father of the man.
Wordsworth.—My Heart Leaps Up, Line 7.
A little model the master wrought,
Which should be to the larger plan
What the child is to the man.
Longfellow.—(By the Seaside building the ship.)
Youth, what man’s age is like to be, doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
Denham.—On Prudence, Line 225. [The same idea is found in the French proverb, l’ Homme est toujours l’ enfant, et l’ enfant toujours l’ homme. The man is always the child, and the child is always the man.] (From a Dictionary of Quotations, published by G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster Row, 1799.)
When the man you see
You find him what you saw the boy would be,
Disguis’d a little; but we still behold
What pleased, and what offended us of old.
Crabbe.—Tales of the Hall, Book III.
The man you see through life retain’d
The boy’s defects, his virtues too remain’d.
Crabbe.—Tales of the Hall, Book III.