Is reading Faulkner going to make you a better person? Absolutely not. But the whole universe wants you to be optimized, productive, monetized. And sitting around and reading a work of art when it is not your job to do so is a rebellious act that insists I am a human being, actually, and not a cog, not a good little worker, not a cozy girl eating the slop that is fed to me. And developing the parts of myself that are unproductive, ugly, and a drain on resources is a beautiful act of rebellion.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there.
I fancy that most of those who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.
There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.
This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today.
Sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming.
But even where he did not accept, he absorbed; her young idealism worked upon his maturity to produce an amalgam very gentle and wise.
Children of one, two, or even three throw the whole of themselves into everything they do. They embrace life, and devour it; it is why they learn so fast and are such good company.
The only difference between bad and good students in this respect is that the bad students forget right away, while the good students are careful to wait until after the exam.
We made a terrible mistake when (with the best of intentions) we separated children from adults and learning from the rest of life, and one of our most urgent tasks is to take down the barriers we have put between them and let them come back together.
They value most in children what children least value in themselves. Small wonder that their effort; to build character is such a failure; they don’t know it when they see it.
At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.
Do children really need so much praise? When a child, after a long struggle, finally does the cube puzzle, does he need to be told that he has done well? Doesn’t he know, without being told, that he has accomplished something?
The good thinker can take his time because he can tolerate uncertainty, he can stand not knowing. The poor thinker can’t stand not knowing; it drives him crazy.
But the ideas of order of all too many schools are that order should, must, can only rest on fear, threat, and punishment. They would rather have systems of order based on fear, even when they don’t work, than systems of order based on the children’s cooperation–that work.
It is nonsense to think that we can give children a love of “succeeding” without at the same time giving them an equal dread of “failing.”
Everything is made out of Magic; leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places.
“It is a very nice song,” he said. “I like it. Perhaps it means just what I mean when I want to shout out that I am thankful to the Magic.” He stopped and thought in a puzzled way. “Perhaps they are both the same thing. How can we know the exact names of everything?”
I never knowed it by that name but what does th’ name matter? I warrant they call it a different name i’ France an’ a different one i’ Germany. Th’ same thing as set th’ seeds swellin’ an’ th’ sun shinin’ made thee a well lad an’ it’s th’ Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worrit, bless thee. It goes on makin’ worlds by th’ million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believin’ in th’ Big Good Thing an’ knowin’ th’ world’s full of it—an call it what tha’ likes.
That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy.
Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the garden. Don’t look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about.
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one’s eyes.
IÂ am on the side of the unreasonÂable aesthetic judgment, always.
The craftsman survives so long as the standards for judging his work are shared by different classes. The professional appears when it is necessary for the craftsman to leave his class and “emigrate” to the ruling class, whose standards of judgement are different.