O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the loss of childlike joy and simplicity in adulthood.
Leo Rosten's quote suggests that as we grow up, we tend to adopt serious facades and responsibilities that overshadow our innate childlike spirit. Despite the complexities of adult life, the essence of who we are remains connected to the simple joys and imaginative nature of childhood, which is often best expressed through fairy tales.
In practice
During a speech about creativity, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of maintaining a childlike wonder in artistic pursuits.
Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind.
I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths. For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.
The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being very slow-witted.
Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.
The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make a difference that you lived at all-using the talents that God has given you for the betterment of others.
Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
[…] but I believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything could ever be. But it was also incredibly simple.
It was certainly not this mummified and outrageously painted old woman he was seeing before him, but the entire "female species," as it was his custom to call women. The individual disappeared, the features were obliterated, whether young or senile, beautiful or ugly - those were mere unimportant variations. Behind each woman rises the austere, sacred and mysterious face of Aphrodite.
I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.
God is not an encyclopedia whose task is to satisfy our curiosity.
I have come not to make war on the Italians, but to aid the Italians against Rome.
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