Let the parent ask "Why?" and the child produce the answer, if he can. After he has turned the matter over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him - and he will remember it - the reason why.

Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.

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.

Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.

Education, like faith, is the evidence of things not seen.

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.

What a child digs for becomes his own possession.