“The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.”
As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 127
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Anaïs Nin 278
writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903–1977Related quotes
R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Context: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.

“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another.”

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965), p. 55 and Back Cover

Jewcy, "What makes Mandy Patinkin spin his wheels" http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Article%5El1739&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Articles

When They Come Alive http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=114&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)

“A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.”
The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

“Her love was entire as a child’s, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring.”
Source: Far From The Madding Crowd