The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult.
Interpretation
Childhood is characterized by wonder and amazement, which fades as we grow up and become accustomed to life.
This quote by Eugene Ionesco reflects on the transition from childhood to adulthood, suggesting that the end of childhood is marked by a loss of astonishment and novelty in the world around us. As we mature, the extraordinary becomes ordinary, and the sense of wonder that defines childhood is replaced by familiarity and acceptance of existence, indicating a significant shift in perspective and experience.
In practice
In a speech about retaining childlike wonder as we age.
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.
If you need me or my help I will help you, whatever path you may follow. For me there is no difference. All paths lead to the same goal, that is, to realize the Divine.
The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it.
The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.
When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. _x000D_ This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. _x000D_ That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. _x000D_ And those are the people that we are one with.
You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.