Wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.

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.

Education is a matter of the spirit. No wiser word has been said on the subject, and yet we persist in applying education from without. No one knoweth the things of the man except the spirit of man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education, he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind stuff. Both quantity and quality are essential.

The peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas and furnish the imagination with pictures.

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.

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

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.