All children's books are about ideals. Adult fiction sets out to portray and then explain the world as it really is; books for chi...ldren present it as it should be. Child readers come to them hoping for a certain amount of instruction, but chiefly for stories in which the petty restrictions of ordinary life are removed: they want to encounter people who can fly, geese that lay golden eggs, frogs that turn into princes, spaceships piloted by children, anything that measures up to their ideals of adventure and imagination. Adults, on the other hand, are more likely to want to feed the children a set of moral examples. By all means, let them have their fun, but the opportunity of providing models of ideal behaviour is not to be wasted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a p...rettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diver...ting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon, an...d superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth ma...rking, in the lifetimes of many generations; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon--the most favored alternative method.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ordinary time is "quality time" too. Everyday activities are not just necessities that keep you from serious child rearing: they a...re the best opportunities for learning you can give your child...because her chief task in her first three years is precisely to gain command of the day-to-day life you take for granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress ...in philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »