It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and ...of the race of giants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
D'Arrast: "Just tell me, has your good Jesus always answered your call?" The Rooster: "Always, no, Captain."... D'Arrast: "Well, then?" The Rooster burst out in a fresh and childlike laugh: "Well, he is free, isn't he?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of youn...g people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts and grapes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace ...between our parents' safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Catholicism] offers a much richer pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different kinds of honey, is s...o indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature, that Protestantism will always show to Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter negativity of it is to the Catholic mind incomprehensible. To intellectual Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs and practices to which the Church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish as they are to Protestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense of "childlike",--innocent and amiable, and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition of the dear people's intellects. To the Protestant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand each other--their centres of emotional energy are too different.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The slow-witted approach to the HIV epidemic was the result of a thousand years of Christian malpractice and the childlike approac...h of the church to sexuality. If any single man was responsible, it was Augustine of Hippo who murdered his way to sainthood spouting on about the sins located in his genitals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The conflict between science and religion is in reality a misunderstanding of both. Scientific materialism has merely introduced a... new hypostasis, and that is an intellectual sin. It has given another name to the supreme principle of reality and has assumed that this created a new thing and destroyed an old thing. Whether you call the principle of existence "God," "matter," "energy," or anything else you like, you have created nothing; you have merely changed a symbol. The materialist is a metaphysician malgré lui. Faith, on the other hand, tries to retain a primitive mental condition on merely sentimental grounds. It is unwilling to give up the primitive, childlike relationship to mind-created and hypostatized figures; it wants to go on enjoying the security and confidence of a world still presided over by powerful, responsible, and kindly parents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The real thinking of woman ... is pre-eminently practical and applied. It is something we describe as sound common sense, and is u...sually directed to what is close at hand and personal.... In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgment, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing. Where a man takes up objective problems, a woman contents herself with solving riddles; where he battles for knowledge and understanding, she contents herself with faith or superstition, or else she makes assumptions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »