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Infantile Quotes

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Infantile Quotes

“The men and women of the Golden Age, Hesiod wrote, lived in an eternal spring, for hundreds of years, always youthful, fed on acorns from a great oak, on wild fruits, on honey. In the Silver Age, which is less written about, the people lived for 100 years as children, without growing up, and then quite suddenly aged and died. The Fabians and the social scientists, writers and teachers saw, in a way earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences. They saw that they were neither dolls, nor toys, nor miniature adults. They saw, many of them, that children needed freedom, needed not only to learn, and be good, but to play and be wild. But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for a perpetual childhood, a Silver Age.”

ChildhoodNostalgia19th CenturyGolden AgeInfantileFreudPrehistoryVictoriansHesiodSilver Age
Book:The Children's Book
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“I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Pasenow, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the sur-real sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera. Man is a child wandering lost—to cite Baudelaire`s poem again—in the "forests of symbols." (The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.)”

RealRealityDeathChildhoodConfusionMaturityAdolescenceDeath PenaltySurrealSymbolismCapital PunishmentInfantileSignBaudelaireSignificationMotor Vehicle Accident
Book:The Art of the Novel
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“Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or more were effaced, and there he was, the alert and predatory sub-human, further from what she believed man should be like than the naked savage, because the savage was tractable, while this creature, wearing the armor of his own rigid barbaric culture, consciously defied progress. And that was what Stenham saw, too; to him the boy was a perfect symbol of human backwardness, and excited his praise precisely because he was “pure”: there was no room in his personality for anything that mankind had not already fully developed long ago. To him he was a consolation, a living proof that today’s triumph was not yet total; he personified Stenham’s infantile hope that time might still be halted and man sent back to his origins.”

ProgressCivilizationColonialismAntiquityHuman DevelopmentWestern CivilizationBoyhoodInfantileOriginsCultural HegemonyDomesticationFrench Morocco
Book:The Spider's House
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“In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.”

SaidAmericaPoliticalEnjoyPleasureOffersIntellectualEuropeCapacitySensualStabilityInfantileContinentalSensual Pleasure
Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
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“Cheap music, childish images, the vulgate in language, in its crassest sense, can penetrate to the deeps of our necessities and dreams. It can assert irrevocable tenure there. The opening bars, the hammer-beat accelerando of Edith Piaf's Je ne regrette rien - the text is infantile, the tune stentorian, and the politics which enlisted the song unattractive - tempt every nerve in me, touch the bone with a cold burn and draw me into God knows what infidelities to reason, each time I hear the song, and hear it, uncalled for, recurrent inside me.”

KnowsReasonDreamSongLanguageColdBeatsDrawsBonesBarsOpeningTunesNervesInfidelityHammersGod KnowsPenetrateUnattractiveTenureIrrevocableInfantileEnlisted
Book:Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?
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“Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

EyeRunningDesireDarkImagineWeekColorBabyMouthsUniversalElectionSizeExtremesWideRagePresidentialVotingLive ByCoveredSweatPotatoesMutePresidential ElectionInfantileHippo
Book:Idoru
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“Certainly the most obvious . . . example of the strictly infantile essence of America's all-conquering mentality greets our eyes daily, anywhere and everywhere, in the guise of the tabloid newspaper. The tabloid newspaper actually means to the typical American of the era what the Bible is popularly supposed to have meant to the typical Pilgrim Father: viz. a very present help in times of trouble, plus a means of keeping out of trouble via harmless, since vicarious, indulgence in the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.”

WorldMeanHelpingEyeAmericaFatherTroubleExampleEssenceObviousNewspapersConquerVanityErasWickedPlusMentalityTypicalIndulgencePilgrimTabloidsGuiseInfantileVicariousTimes Of TroubleWicked World
Author:e. e. cummings
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“In general, I feel, or I have come to feel, that the richest writing comes not from the people who dedicate themselves to writing alone. I know this is contradicted again and again but I continue to feel it. They don't, of course, write as much, or as fast, but I think it is riper and more satisfying when it does come. One of the difficulties of writing or doing any kind of creative work in America seems to me to be that we put such stress on production and material results. We put a time pressure and a mass pressure on creative work which are meaningless and infantile in that field.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsFeelsWritingKindDoeSeemsAmericaCoursesResultsCreativeFieldsMaterialsMassDifficultyStressPressureProductionsSatisfyingMeaninglessAgain And AgainCreative WorkInfantileDifficulty Of Writing
Author:Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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“A problem with my novels is that they, from the start, have been infantile and incredibly childish. There are childishness, stupidity, lack of wisdom, fantasies. At the same time, that's where my creativity can be found. If I tried to control it and make it more mature, it wouldn't be good at all. It'd be uninteresting, without any vivacity.”

IfsHas BeensProblemFoundCreativityFantasyNovelStupidityBe GoodMatureInfantileChildishnessVivacity
Author:Karl Ove Knausgard
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“A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honour of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row, who were circling madly about the heap and pelting him. His infantile countenance was livid with the fury of battle. His small body was writhing in the delivery of oaths.”

LittlesBookBodyBoysBattleDevilStonesHonourThrowingFuryOathLittle BoysDeliveryAlleysCountenanceInfantileGravelRumThrowing Stones
Book:Maggie: A Girl of the Streets & Other Stories
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“The steadily inward look leads us all to death, nations as well as persons, and is equally infantile in them all. Perhaps the most useful thing I have learned in my lifetime is that the process of maturing gradually turns the mind away from the small-self to the greater-self that is only served by serving others.”

MindWellsLooksPersonsSelfTurnsNationsProcessGreaterLifetimeServingMatureI Have LearnedInwardServing OthersInfantileUseful Things
Author:Margery Wilson
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“It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true-unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward-shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.”

IfsThinkingHumansLongSaidFormUsedPleasureClassStudySpecialSubjectsShapesProjectsDevilOkayAgreeSuicideUsed To BeMessGentlemanSatanLong AgoInwardBangsShamefulInfantile
Author:Martin Amis
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“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain't-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on--our lost narcissism lives on--in our ego ideal.”

GivingSelfWholeDreamRealityMightFacesLostGoalLossPerfectMoralVisionGrowing UpWonderfulChildhoodEgoGiving UpMajorsStandardsIdealsPerfectionEthicalPortionsNarcissismCompellingFinestOur DreamsLimitlessInfantile
Book:Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex
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“Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rational, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be savedthat is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women.”

GivingEndsPainPoliticalDesireCertainPoliticsForceFearPoorStruggleSacrificeAmountOffersGiving UpJewEnormousDiscriminationRationalCrueltyOverwhelmingPrimitiveIrrationalStemThreateningInfantilePower Struggle
Author:Vivian Gornick
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“Indeed, the great Leonardo (da Vinci) remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way. It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries.”

MenWayChildrenSaidReasonPlayWholeAdultsBoundsOne WayReason WhyGreat MenUncannyInfantileLeonardo
Book:Leonardo da Vinci
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“When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.”

IfsShouldChildrenPersonsMatterEasyDarkVirtueTypeTreatsFaultsAffectionTreatedLimitationTitlesFollyMatureConceptionReverenceInfantileDazed
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.”

MenHas BeensSometimesHappensLyingValuesAttentionCasesFashionAngelEmbraceCommandBeastDemonTouchingLockedPsychoanalysisSimplificationInfantile
Book:His Master's Voice
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“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”

ChildrenBodyCoursesGoalPleasureAnimalSubjectsPersonalityCapableConscienceFundamentalsSeekingInstanceOrganizedUrgesAppetiteExclusiveRenunciationInfantilePostponementPleasure Seeking
Book:The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
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“Madame Bovary is one my favorite novels. Emma Bovary will always be an enigma, but as the years pass, I feel that I understand her better. She has a violent nostalgia, almost an infantile nostalgia, to be understood by the men surrounding her. I like her relentless fight for independence, her rebellion against the mediocre, and her quest for the sublime, even if she burns her wigs in the process. I like that Flaubert never judges her morally for her self-destructiveness, for her desperate attempt to satisfy her wildest desires and appetites.”

IfsMenFeelsYearsSelfDesireFightingProcessNovelHe ManJudgingUnderstoodIndependenceMy FavoriteNostalgiaViolentDesperateRebellionAppetiteQuestsSublimeMediocreRelentlessLike HerEmmaWigsEnigmaInfantileDestructiveness
Author:Sophie Barthes
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“What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal people. The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psycho-analysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences.”

PeopleGivingViewsTakenFateInfluenceNormalDeterminedImpressionAnalysisPossessedPursuedPsychoInfantileTransference
Book:Beyond the Pleasure Principle
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“I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place? My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?”

WorldFirstsChallengesResponsibilityRolesCitizensPressureAskingWestIslamRacistMatureConformTaking ResponsibilityIntimidationPluralismInfantileClams
Author:Irshad Manji
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“Where psychedelics comes together with that is that it's going to require a transformation of human language and understanding to stop the momentum of the historical process, to halt nuclear proliferation, germ warfare, infantile 19th century politics, all these things. It cannot be accomplished through a frontal assault upon it by political means.”

HumansMeanTogetherPoliticalLanguageProcessUnderstandingCenturyTransformationHistoricalNuclearAccomplishedWarfareAssaultMomentum19th CenturyHaltGermsProliferationInfantileHuman LanguageNuclear Proliferation
Author:Terence McKenna
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“Being a teenager is the worst thirty years of your life. Peer pressure, acne, final exams, seven little tiny hairs on your upper lip. Luckily, the girls never noticed your infantile moustache, 'cos they were hyptonised by the fire engine sized zit on your forehead.”

YearsLittlesGirlFireWorstHairPressureSevenFinalsLipsTinyTeenagerThirtyEnginesPeersForeheadsThirty YearsExamPeer PressureInfantileMoustacheAcneBeing A TeenagerZitsFinal Exams
Author:Christopher Titus
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“The business of the state trying to legislate modesty is relatively both an infantile and ridiculous procedure. Of course, it is true that the more things are secreted the more intriguing they become, because it is always the forbidden that has the strongest appeal. Nudity is a state of fact - lewdity a state of mind.”

TryingMindStatesFactsCoursesRidiculousAppealsStrongestState Of MindModestyForbiddenProceduresIntriguingNudityInfantile
Book:Paul Outerbridge, Jr: photographs
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