I'd rather break stones on the king's highway than hem a handkerchief.

Yes, I am proud, and very humble too.

You can't touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better , if less "showily." Let him come and go freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself... Teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experiences.

Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitation touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be, therein to be content.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.