Maleficent has suffered abuse in the past, and there’s a reason why she is now as furious as she is. And I think that children who have been outcast and abused in any way will relate to her. There’s a beautiful side to her; she’s not just a dark person. She has all these facets. And that is interesting.

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.

I don’t pick up toys. I crush them.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

I’ve worked with children all my life.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The complexity of things – the things within things – just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it’s very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!