This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can.
The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,
if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring
that we used to gather with our tiny fingers
as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass,
the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows,
the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because
they did no harm to the precious crops.
What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything
is known and loved because it is known?
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
An antique illustration showing a Victorian lady walking beside her daughter who is riding on the back of a donkey down a country lane. You can download this vintage drawing as a free 8" x 10" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark for collage, graphic design, papercrafts or scrapbooking projects here.
From my personal collection of ephemera. All digital scans by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.