Childish vs. childlike
“I’m going to write because I cannot help it.” Charlotte Bronte
On the face of it this is a rather benign statement. When I suggested that I liked that quote, someone told me not to encourage childish statements.
Childlike is what I thought of those words not childish. A quality almost lost to most of the modern world with its technological advances and pressures of life.
Bronte’s desire to write was not out of an addiction as the critic of her quote told me. I would rather think that it was out of an overflow of emotion and heart. The time that Bronte was alive was not a time of serious expression for women, so writing would have been her release of experience so limited that her imagination had to be abundant.
Sorry, I find it a charming quote. And yes very childlike in all aspects of a pure heart and a thirst for life.