Anyone who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems.
Ellen KeyConventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearances before reality, form before content.
Ellen KeyThe educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present.
Ellen KeyNothing would more effectively further the development of education than for all flogging pedagogues to learn to educate with the head instead of with the hand.
Ellen KeyThe genius of happiness is still so rare. To possess it means to approach life with the humility of a beggar, but to treat it with the proud generosity of a prince; to bring to its totality the deep understanding of a great poet and to each of its moments the abandonment and ingenuousness of a child.
Ellen KeyA great poet has seldom sung of lawfully wedded happiness, but of free and secret love; and in this respect, too the time is coming when there will no longer be one standard of morality for poetry and another for life. To anyone tender of conscience, the ties formed by a free connection are stronger than the legal ones.
Ellen Key