Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that Americans often shelter their children to shield them from life's difficulties.
Chinua Achebe reflects on a common tendency in American culture to safeguard children from the inevitable struggles and harsh realities of life. This protective instinct, while well-meaning, may ultimately hinder children's ability to develop resilience and confront challenges, which are essential for personal growth and maturity.
In practice
In a lecture about parenting styles, one could use this quote to discuss the balance between protection and reality in child-rearing.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
In war, truth is the first casualty.
War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.
Everyone has values; even criminal gangs have values. Values govern people's behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors.
Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.
The banyan tree does not mean awakening, nor does the hill, nor the saint, nor the European couple. The lotus is a symbol of regeneration.
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