"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Christian apologistsAnglicans from the United KingdomUniversity of Oxford facultyTheologians from Northern IrelandPeople from Belfast
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) — in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
C. S. Lewis
1898 – 1963
irischer Schriftsteller und Literaturwissenschaftler
281 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by C. S. Lewis →
Related Quotes
"There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For …"
"This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour …"
"We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them."
"What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F. [Highest Common Factor], and Man's conquest of …"
"I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason."
"Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty."
"We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionall…"
"I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe…"
"It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have bee…"
"'But what of the poor Ghosts who never get into the omnibus at all?' 'Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There …"