"The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him"
About this Quote
Casals isn’t handing out a participation trophy; he’s issuing a moral directive disguised as tenderness. “The child must know” is the tell: this is less about self-esteem than about responsibility. A miracle, here, isn’t supernatural hype - it’s a way of insisting that a child’s interior life is non-negotiable, that their existence carries a singular charge the world is obligated to protect.
The line works because it stretches time to make individuality feel physical. By dragging in “since the beginning of the world” and “until the end,” Casals turns a parenting principle into something like a musical crescendo: the phrasing keeps widening until the child’s uniqueness feels unavoidable. It’s also a subtle rebuke to systems that flatten people early - schools that prize conformity, politics that treats children as future labor, families that love conditionally. If there will never be “another child like him,” then humiliation, neglect, and casual comparison aren’t just unkind; they’re a kind of vandalism.
Context matters: Casals, a towering cellist who opposed Franco and lived in exile, understood how regimes survive by shrinking human beings into categories. His insistence on the child as “miracle” reads as cultural resistance - an argument that dignity has to be taught before it can be defended. For a musician, it’s also craft advice in disguise: the point isn’t to produce replicas, but to help a one-time instrument learn its own sound.
The line works because it stretches time to make individuality feel physical. By dragging in “since the beginning of the world” and “until the end,” Casals turns a parenting principle into something like a musical crescendo: the phrasing keeps widening until the child’s uniqueness feels unavoidable. It’s also a subtle rebuke to systems that flatten people early - schools that prize conformity, politics that treats children as future labor, families that love conditionally. If there will never be “another child like him,” then humiliation, neglect, and casual comparison aren’t just unkind; they’re a kind of vandalism.
Context matters: Casals, a towering cellist who opposed Franco and lived in exile, understood how regimes survive by shrinking human beings into categories. His insistence on the child as “miracle” reads as cultural resistance - an argument that dignity has to be taught before it can be defended. For a musician, it’s also craft advice in disguise: the point isn’t to produce replicas, but to help a one-time instrument learn its own sound.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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