The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.
Interpretation
Childhood experiences provide valuable life lessons that can guide us throughout our lives.
This quote by Flannery O'Connor suggests that the challenges and experiences faced during childhood equip individuals with essential knowledge about life. If one cannot learn and grow from the small experiences of youth, it is unlikely that they will cope effectively with the more significant challenges that come later in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about perseverance in life.
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 don’t 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.
What would be the good of rushing? You want these books to last.
Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.
Sometimes I think that it is enough to say that if we don't sit down and shut up once in a while we'll lose our minds even earlier than we had expected. Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.
These heavy troubles are heralds of weighty mercies.
Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don't know.
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.