Genius: the ability to prolong one's childhood.
Interpretation
Genius lies in retaining a childlike wonder and curiosity throughout life.
H. L. Mencken's quote suggests that true genius is not just an intellectual capability but rather the ability to maintain a sense of youthfulness, curiosity, and creativity that is often associated with childhood. This perspective implies that those who can nurture their imaginative spirit and view the world with wonder are more likely to achieve greatness and innovation, as they embrace new ideas and experiences without the cynicism that typically develops in adulthood.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about fostering creativity in education.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
We judge of man's wisdom by his hope.
However varied you try to make your work, you still bump up against the end of you. You keep knocking into a wall, and the wall is your own skull. But when you adapt somebody's work, it's like a door into somewhere else. It feels like a holiday from myself.
The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.
Dripping water hollows out a stone
There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.
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