Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.
Interpretation
Children inherently understand the importance of love, recognizing its absence as a form of suffering.
This quote suggests that children possess a natural intuition about love and its significance in their lives. Flannery O'Connor emphasizes that a lack of love is akin to experiencing hell, highlighting how vital affection and emotional connection are to well-being, especially in the formative years of childhood. Children can identify love and its absence, demonstrating their sensitivity to emotional environments.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a parenting seminar focused on emotional intelligence in children.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people donβt realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap
Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.
To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love...
It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.
There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.
A house without a cat is like a day without sunshine, a pie without fromage, a dinner without wine.
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