Let children feed on the good, the excellent, the great! Don't get in their way with little lectures, facts, and guided tours!

The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.

Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.

Profound thought is conveyed in language of very great simplicity and purity.

Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.

I think we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the "fit" book; and this for two reasons: What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated. I do not mean to say that the lecture and the oral lesson are without their uses; but these uses are, to give impulse and to order knowledge; and not to convey knowledge.