"First keep the peace within yourself then you can also bring it to others."
-- Thomas à Kempis

"With our children we are faced with the best and worst in ourselves. Perhaps no one in our lives can inspire our hostility and anger to surface quite as readily and completely as these people we call our daughters and sons."
-- Shea Darian

"Whenever I have responded inappropriately to [my children], I can always trace my actions to an unresolved personal issue. My aggression is not about them. They are merely catalysts who help bring it to the surface. On the other hand, when I am at peace with myself, my children can act outrageously, and I am able to respond with a clear mind and heart. I am able to set clear boundaries and offer firm gestures that inspire mutual respect and help to build our relationship as parent and child."
-- Shea Darian

"If I can create peace with my children, then perhaps I will really learn something."
-- unknown peace activist

"Children often can forget their sins and ours as rapidly as hot water removes large quantities of peanut butter and jelly from their faces and hair. Seeing children's ability to change makes some parents realize that change is possible for them as well. Watching how quickly children can give up anger and moods helps us loosen our grip on our own hurts and worries."
-- Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

"Children teach us about forgiveness, first by being forgiving themselves."
-- Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

"I was pretty judgmental before I had kids. It was easy then to see what parents were doing wrong. But now that I know how hard it is to make the right decisions, how tired you are, I am much more generous in my evaluations of others."
-- Marvin, from Parenting as a Spiritual Journey

"I find it possible to forgive my children (once the angry moment has passed) and have been able to forgive my own parents. But what I find most difficult as a parent is forgiving myself."
-- Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer

"If there is something we wish to change in the child we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves."
-- C.G. Jung

"You can't shake hands with a clenched fist."
-- Indira Ghandi

"[I]t isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"[T]he hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in the world can twist them into curious shapes."
-- Carson McCullers

"Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world."
-- Etty Hillesum