We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.
Alexandre DumasRead
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Interpretation
Education can sometimes diminish natural intelligence and curiosity found in childhood.
This quote by Alexandre Dumas suggests a paradox in human development where children, who display inherent intelligence and curiosity, seem to become less intelligent as they grow older, potentially due to the constraints and rigidities imposed by the educational systems they encounter. Dumas implies that formal education may dampen the innate quest for knowledge and creativity that children naturally possess.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the flaws in traditional education systems.
We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.
It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising
I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cypher some in the three first rules in figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day. I should have continued longer if it hadn't been that I concluded I couldn't do any longer without a wife, and so I cut out to hunt me one.
Education is a slow moving but powerful force
Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be.
I think it's a mistake to think, 'Am I going to write a young adult book, or do I desperately want to write a book for adults?' I think the better ambition is to try to write someone's favorite book, because those categorizations of adult, young adult, become kind of superfluous.
βI know you're still young but I want you to understand and learn this now. Marriage can wait, education cannot. You're a very very bright girl. Truly you are. You can be anything you want Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated Laila. No chance.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.
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