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

So much for the right books; the right use of them is another matter. The children must enjoy the book. The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.

We attempt to define a person, the most commonplace person we know, but he will not submit to bounds; some unexpected beauty of nature breaks out; we find he is not what we thought, and begin to suspect that every person exceeds our power of measurement.

Every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of him for the moment another Newton.

We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.

We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children.

Let them get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with diluted talk from the lips of their teacher. The less the parents 'talk-in' and expound their rations of knowledge and thought to the children they are educating, the better for the children...Children must be allowed to ruminate, must be left alone with their own thoughts.