I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling.
Alison GopnikRead
What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote compares the experience of being a baby to the exhilarating feeling of falling in love in an enchanting city, enhanced by a caffeine rush.
In this quote, Alison Gopnik captures the profound and enchanting experience of being a baby, suggesting that it is filled with wonder and intense emotion akin to the feelings one has when experiencing love for the first time in a romantic setting. The comparison to being in Paris, a city often associated with romance, alongside the metaphor of having three double espressos, emphasizes the heightened emotional state and excitement that comes with both experiences.
Themes
BabyLoveExperienceEmotionWonderParis
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote when discussing the innocence and wonder of childhood.
More from Alison Gopnik
All quotes βOurs is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb.
Alison GopnikRead
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
Alison GopnikRead
Similar quotes
Love will enter cloaked in friendship's name.
OvidRead
I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart - so hard, it hurt me. A hundred times I almost rose, almost went in to her; a hundred times I thought, Go to her! Why are you waiting? Go back to her side! But every time, I thought of what would happen if I did. I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.
Sarah WatersRead
Ah, I am the judge of dreams, and you are the judge of love. Well, I find you guilty of dreaming good dreams, and sentence you to a lifetime of working and suffering for the sake of your dreams. I only hope that someday you won't declare me innocent of the crime of loving you.
Orson Scott CardRead
Caregiving requires the intention of love, caretaking requires the intention of fear. Not acting in anger when you are angry requires the intention of love.
Gary ZukavRead
Because they have been in love they have survived everything that life could throw at them, even their own failures.
Peter UstinovRead
We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes. Blind - yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love for finding what he seeks, and only that.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead