Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, all too human II

Mixed opinions and maxims

270 The eternal child. -We believe that fairy tales and games belong to childhood: shortsighted as we are! As if we would like to live without fairy tales and games at any age! Admittedly, we call it something else and experience it differently, but this is precisely what speaks for it being exactly the same thing-for the child, too, feels that games are his work and fairy tales his truth. The brevity of life should preserve us from pedantically separating the ages oflife-as if each one brought something new-and a poet should sometime present to us a human being two hundred years old who really does live without fairy tales and games.