O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the loss of childlike joy and simplicity in adulthood.
Leo Rosten's quote suggests that as we grow up, we tend to adopt serious facades and responsibilities that overshadow our innate childlike spirit. Despite the complexities of adult life, the essence of who we are remains connected to the simple joys and imaginative nature of childhood, which is often best expressed through fairy tales.
In practice
During a speech about creativity, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of maintaining a childlike wonder in artistic pursuits.
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.
The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all-using the talents that God has given you for the betterment of others.
Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.
Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.
The superior man, even when he is not moving, has a feeling of reverence, and while he speaks not, he has the feeling of truthfulness.
And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
This is the place. Stand still, my steed,- Let me review the scene, And summon from the shadowy past The forms that once have been.
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