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Quotes of the Day for 15 May 2010 – L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum was born on his family's estate at Chittenango, New York on this day in 1856. He had a weak heart and was tutored at home, a two year ordeal at a military school left him with a distaste for both the military and schools. He had a lifelong interest in the theatre, generally with disastrous financial results. He opened a department store at Aberdeen, South Dakota, which failed, and he then was editor of the local paper for a time before moving to Chicago and taking up writing. He had read the classic fairy tales, which were much more violent than the versions my generation learned, and he started writing children's books. He used at least a half dozen pseudonyms but mostly wrote under his own name, including sixteen in the series that started with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.
You will find an expanded profile, photo, additional biographical links, and all quotes from this author on the author's Notable Quotable page.
The quotes:
A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it.
Folklore, legends, myths, and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous, and manifestly unreal.
The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.
Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.
Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.
Toto, I have a felling we're not in Kansas anymore.
All from L. Frank Baum, 1856 - 1919
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