Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.

While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.

Thought is impossible without words.

There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction.

The first office of the social organ we call the school is to provide a simplified environment. It selects the features which are fairly fundamental and capable of being responded to by the young. Then it establishes a progressive order, using the factors first acquired as means of gaining insight into what is more complicated.

Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.

To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.