Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.
Interpretation
Childhood ends when wonder and amazement fade from our lives.
This quote by Eugene Ionesco suggests that the essence of childhood is rooted in the ability to find awe and wonder in the world around us. As we grow older and become accustomed to our environments, we often lose that innate curiosity and ability to be astonished, marking a significant transition from the innocence and exploration of childhood to the familiarity and pragmatism of adulthood.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of creativity in education, one might say, 'As Eugene Ionesco said, childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.'
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin.
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.
But the big feature of human-level intelligence is not what it does when it is works but what it does when it's stuck.
The best actors just stay in the moment,and whatever happens in the scene is a genuine surprise. You really do not know what's going to happen next. But living that out in life is very dangerous because it throws you into a place where you don't know if you're going to survive.
So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.
Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!
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