“One cannot really be Catholic & grown-up.”

— George Orwell

"Extracts from a Manuscript Notebook" (1949), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4 (1968)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 30, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One cannot really be Catholic & grown-up." by George Orwell?

George Orwell 473

English author and journalist 1903–1950

Related quotes

“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.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) — in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
Context: 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.

“Indeed I cannot doubt that there has been really one grand empire, or one Universal, one Pandæan, or one Catholic religion, with one language, which has extended over the whole of the world; uniting or governing at the same time…”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 443.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

“It is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up.”

Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia

The Silver Chair (1953), Ch. 16: The Healing of Harms
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956)

“The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

“What she needed was just one person, one wise and sympathetic grown-up who could help her.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

“… any one who has noticed may have observed that the weeping of grown up persons produces a sensation of awe on the mind of a child. Accustomed to associate the idea of superiority with that of their elders, they cannot understand their giving way to the same emotions as themselves.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

“One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"An Unread Book," introduction to The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (Holt, Rinehart, 1965 edition)
General sources

“Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“To become historically-minded is to be grown-up.”

James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) American historian

Source: The Human Comedy : As Devised and Directed by Mankind Itself (1937), Ch. 1
Context: It is a poor technic when attempting to convert one's neighbor to attack his beliefs directly, especially those of the sacred variety. We may flatter ourselves that we are undermining them by our potent reasoning only to find that we have shored them up so that they are firmer than ever. Often history will work where nothing else will. It very gently modifies one's attitude. Refutations are weak compared with its mild but potent operation. To become historically-minded is to be grown-up.

“The Catholic writer really needs only three things to succeed: faith, hope and ingenuity”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

31
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)