Children, no matter how gifted, can't see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime, and telling them that things will be fine when they grow up does no good at all.
Most children feel immortal--they have no sense that they're ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that's barely comprehensible.
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
HANNAH ARENDT, The Human Condition
- And where, on earth, dwell hope and truth?
- In childhood's uncorrupted heart;
- Alas! too soon to guileless youth
- The world doth its dark code impart!
ANNE S. BUSHBY, "The Morn of Life"
Children keep a family together, especially when one can't get a babysitter.
FREDERICK SHEPPERD, Electricity on the Farm
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