Childlikeness Quotes & Sayings

The nights go on waiting for a light that never comes — Karen Marie Moning

He got a booklet out of a folder. 'This is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It's a standardized psychometric test we use to assess and analyze an individual's personality dynamic. It's got about six hundred true-or-false questions. You fill this out and then the computer will generate a report.' Well, I thought this was absolutely perfect! I was just delighted with the idea that psychodiagnostic algorithms would generate a posthumanist psychiatric profile for me for the autobiography. And both the Imaginary Intern and I felt this would really streamline the process, that it would save us a tremendous amount of work, and obviate the need for all that cloying introspection and redemptive candor that we both found so nauseating and counterrevolutionary. — Mark Leyner

By every law of nature and sex a kiss was the only rejoinder that fitted the mood and the moment, under the suasion of which Sue's undemonstrative regard of him might not inconceivably have changed its temperature. — Thomas Hardy

Childishness and childlikeness are two very different things. To know a childlike person, is to know a very mature person; to know a childish person, is to know a very immature person. To know childlikeness is to know original wisdom; to know childishness is to know original error. And there are many children more mature than adults, many adults less mature than children. — C. JoyBell C.

Bollocks have never frightened me. I'll eat a bollock any time. — Germaine Greer

You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness. — Candace Bushnell

The critic has to do more of what the book critics and art critics have done in the past. Which is give you a context for understanding the restaurant, give you a better way to appreciate it, give you the tools to go in there and be a more informed diner who can get more pleasure out of the experience. — Ruth Reichl

God sends little children to speak and act for him. In their simplicity and naivety they say and do things that we adults never would, but which can reveal deep truths about the way the world should be, if we only would have ears to hear and eyes to see... — Phil Steer

Fairy tales and folk tales are for children and childlike people, not because they are little and inconsequential, but because they are as enormous as life itself. — Anthony Esolen

To simplify your life, just think of yourself as a four-year-old child. Try to imagine the way he thinks of reality. If you have to talk to someone about a so-called complicated matter, see how you can simplify it.
No matter with whom you are talking, feel that you are a child and that person is also a child. When a childlike quality comes into your life, everything automatically becomes simple. — Sri Chinmoy

Looks like I'll be sucking your cock for food, but entirely my way."
Vadim paused. "No. Food is free. I'll give you money so you can buy food."
Dan's head hidden, lowered, Vadim couldn't see his facial expression. Surprise. Astonishment, his Russkie was more decent to him than he'd expected. Had hoped for a scrap to eat, but this treatment was more of a royal one. "You're treating me like I used to treat my pussies." Dan smirked, lifting his head.
"You shaved their heads? You weird man." Vadim chuckled while Dan muttered one of his choice obscenities. — Marquesate

Dim vision ages us rapidly, and we lose the childlikeness that once made us feel like real princes and princesses in a kingdom. We can be young and yet feel old. Heavy laden. Burdened. In a pit where vision is lost and dreams are foolishness. — Beth Moore

If you allow yourself to deepen with midlife, your experience of everything deepens, including your experience of God. — Marianne Williamson

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why the hell did I say that? As soon as Furi saw the hurt on Syn's face, he'd immediately wanted to take those spiteful words back. Furi was scared shitless, and he was indeed projecting, just like Syn said he was. It wasn't Syn's fault that his life was so fucked right now. Actually, if it weren't for the cop, Furi would be going through this on his own; honestly, he'd be dead now. Syn was trying to stick by him, contrary to what Furi's mind was telling him. Syn was trying to put forth the effort to be with him, and Furi wasn't cutting him an inch of slack. Now here he was in his apartment, under his protection and he'd just insulted him so cruelly that Syn couldn't respond. — A.E. Via

Is it showing off if you hate it? — David Foster Wallace

Boyishness - by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure, good nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker. — Thomas Hughes

Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say that the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness. — John Dewey

Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive. — Chris Raschka

The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of the Russian poets such as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky - oppositional figures who could draw crowds. The Russian poets recited from memory as a matter of course. — James Fenton

I am sure that I am in possession of a soul that is at the very least, a thousand years old. And I say this not on a whim; I say this as someone who is sure of something, who is not thinking fancifully but who is thinking solidly and fully. So why is it that I am childlike and playful? There is only one answer to this, and that is, after existing for a very long time, one learns the skill of retaining childlikeness and the state of childlikeness, which is called playfulness. The immature are not childlike and they are not playful; rather, they are manipulative and insecure. Manipulation is the game of the immature and insecurity is their state of being. I'm saying this because I want to draw the great distinction in the sand very clearly. The older your soul becomes, the more childlike it will be in texture. But we only make playtime out of small and joyful things; there is no playtime when it comes to bravery, honesty, and trust. — C. JoyBell C.

When virtue is pictured as innocence and innocence equated with childlikeness, the implication is obviously that knowledge and experience are no longer media of goodness, but have become in themselves contaminating. This is a very despairing outlook, in its way as black as Augustine's original sin, for it supposes that original goodness will in all likelihood be defiled ... It surrenders the attempt to represent virtue in a mature phase. — Marina Warner

The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed. — Roman Payne

Of course there are depressing periods when nothing appears to be happening. But whenever anything was happening, and even when nothing was happening, it was fun just to do phage experiments. — Alfred Hershey

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid. — Pablo Picasso

Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Childish, selfish, immature - that's right, I am. But do you know how much money I make for thinking this way? — Tom Hanks

For any practice to work, the mind which is meditating on the object must merge. Often they are facing each other. One has to become completely absorbed, then the transformation will occur. — Tenzin Palmo

Those who have attained considerable spiritual stature are frequently noted for their "childlikeness." What this really means is that they do not use their face and body to hide their spiritual reality. In their body they are genuinely present to those around them. That is a great spiritual attainment or gift. — Dallas Willard

God sense little children to speak and act for him. In their simplicity and naivety they say and do things that we adults never would, but which can reveal deep truths about the way the world should be, if we only would have ears to hear and eyes to see... God sense children to speak into our world.. — Phil Steer

We must remember that the soul is but a hollow which God fills. — C.S. Lewis

Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. 'Childlikeness' has to be restored with long years of training in the art of selfforgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think. He thinks like showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens; he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage. — Alan W. Watts

What makes a man's 80 year-old Irish uncle skip like a little boy? Me Father is very fond of me! — John Ortberg Jr.