“He spared the child and spoiled the rod
I have not sold myself to God!”
Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist
Babelogue, from Easter (1978)
Lyrics
Walter Scott, manuscript note written in 1825; cited from J. G. Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) p. 81 col. 2.
Criticism
“He spared the child and spoiled the rod
I have not sold myself to God!”
Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist
Babelogue, from Easter (1978)
Lyrics
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Book III, ch. 19. http://books.google.com/books?id=7e0NAAAAYAAJ&q=%22For+he+who+is+unmusical+is+a+child+in+music+he+who+is+without+letters+is+a+child+in+learning+he+who+is+untaught+is+a+child+in+life%22&pg=PA241#v=onepage <br class="br">Discourses
“4238. Spare the Rod, and spoil the Child.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.
The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.
If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.
Markiplier (1989) American YouTuber and Internet personality
Video game commentary, Calm Time (November 23, 2013)
“When a child begins to play games… he enters the gateway to reason and imagination together.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician
"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)