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

Children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times - a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books. Their lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive powers. If the children do not live in the times of his history lesson, be not at home in the climate his geography book describes, why, these lessons will fail of their purpose.

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

Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out-"Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?" and so on.

A child gets moral notions from the fairy-tales he delights in, as do his elders from tale and verse.

Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind.

In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.