Fallen Leaves

Children and fools speak the truth”; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.

Please do not expect any new system of philosophy, nor any world-shaking cogitations; these will be human confessions, not divine revelations; they are micro- or mini-essays whose only dignity lies in their subjects rather than in their profundity or their size.

See him, the newborn, dirty but marvelous, ridiculous in actuality, infinite in possibility, capable of that ultimate miracle—growth. Can you conceive it—that this queer bundle of sound and pain will come to know love, anxiety, prayer, suffering, creation, metaphysics, death? He cries; he has been so long asleep in the quiet warm womb of his mother... See more

The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageable, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.

Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.

Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.

Knowledge grows, but wisdom, though it can improve with years, does not progress with centuries. I cannot instruct Solomon.

Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.

Our children bring us up by showing us, through imitation, what we really are.