How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn: and only Karellen's ears could catch the first wailings of the winter storms.
And only Karellen knew with what inexorable swiftness the Golden Age was rushing to its close. (14.38-39)
For this to be considered a Golden Age, it needed the detail that it was one for "any race." After all, if you look at so-called utopian ideals in the past, the Golden Age really only works for the race running the show.
Quote #8
[Thanthalteresco] might himself be putting on a superb act, following the performance by logic alone and with his own strange emotions completely untouched, as an anthropologist might take part in some primitive rite. (17.39)
The Overlords never truly integrate with humanity in a way that, say, American culture integrated so many different cultures to create something truly new. Instead, the Overlords are always on the outside of humanity looking in, like the anthropologist imagery above suggests.
Quote #9
To all outward appearances, [Jennifer] was still a baby, but round her now was a sense of latent power so terrifying that Jean could no longer bear to enter the nursery. (19.4)
Appearances can be deceiving. That may be a cliché thing to say, but it holds true for Childhood's End—the Overlords look like devils, but they are scientific, not spiritual, creatures; Jennifer may look like a human baby, but she is anything but human.