Manners are like zero in arithmetic. They may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal of value to everything else.
Freya StarkRead
Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parenthood teaches children the importance of safe love, preparing them for future emotional connections.
In this thoughtful quote, Freya Stark reflects on the essential role of parenthood in nurturing a child's ability to love freely and safely. She emphasizes that the ability to love is fundamental to human happiness and well-being, and that inhibiting this instinct ultimately leads to sorrow. Stark warns against the dangers of disapproval and condemnation, which can stifle the soul's capacity for love and emotional growth, suggesting that the true essence of divinity is found in the love we cultivate.
Themes
ParenthoodLoveEmotionSorrowNurturing
In practice
Example use cases
During a family gathering, when discussing the challenges of raising children, this quote can highlight the importance of fostering safe emotional connections.
More from Freya Stark
All quotes →All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand-any dog, child or horse would recognize the kindness of it.
Freya StarkRead
The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares (...) To avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.
Freya StarkRead
The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.
Freya StarkRead
One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.
Freya StarkRead
The portion we see of human beings is very small: their formats and faces, voices and words.... beyond these, like an immense dark continent, lies all that has made them.
Freya StarkRead
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