Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Context: I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer. It is how it is written that makes a book acceptable, as a work of art, or unacceptable and pornographic. There are many books circulating today, for the teen-ager as well as the grown up, which would not have been printed in the fifties. It is still amazing to me that A Wrinkle In Time was considered too difficult for children. My children were seven, ten, and twelve while I was writing it, and they understood it. The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
Variant translation: It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI, II
Source: Confessions
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Jean Jacques Rousseau 91
Genevan philosopher 1712–1778Related quotes
“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”
Nemo quam bene vivat sed quam diu curat, cum omnibus possit contingere ut bene vivant, ut diu nulli.
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXII: On the futility of half-way measures, Line 17.
Es ist unendlich schwer, zu wissen, wenn und wo man bleiben soll, und Tausenden für einen ist das Ziel ihres Nachdenkens die Stelle, wo sie des Nachdenkens müde geworden.
Letter to Moses Mendelssohn, January 9, 1771
“Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,
Befits proud birth.”
ἀλλ᾽ ἢ καλῶς ζῆν ἢ καλῶς τεθνηκέναι
τὸν εὐγενῆ χρή
Source: Ajax, Lines 479-480
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CI: On the Futility of Planning Ahead
Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Original: Pienso que vivir solo de la escritura es un privilegio, en términos económicos, que solo algunos escritores y escritoras han conseguido y al que, probablemente, todos los autores aspiramos: una meta difícil que no imposible.
Source: Cazas Fernández, A. (2022). "La escritura le aportó sentido, coherencia e identidad a mi vida". En Correo Gallego. https://www.elcorreogallego.es/el-correo-2/la-escritura-le-aporto-sentido-coherencia-e-identidad-a-mi-vida-AP10794051. Consultado el 16 de junio de 2022.
“If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.”
Rededication and restoration of Congress Hall http://books.google.com/books?id=w0IOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30&dq=%22If+you+think+too+much%22, Philadelphia (25 October 1913)
1910s
Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051031-3.html, October 31, 2005
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (December 9, 1890)
Letters