Give the child good books, then let it alone! Don't plough and harrow its brain, or stretch it on Procrustes-beds of standardization, simplification, and what not!

I eat till, honest, I felt every button on all my clo'es. The folks where we were stayin' were the old-fashioned hospitable kind; they didn't let you off till your jaws struck work and wouldn't wag no more.

You couldn't find nobody deader, not if you'd sarched for a week. Why, door nails, and Julius Caesar, and things o' that description, would ha' been lively compared with your poor ma when I see her. Lively! that's what they'd ha' been.

To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women's club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties?

Give the child good books, then let it alone! Don't plough and harrow its brain, or stretch it on Procrustes-beds of standardization, simplification, and what not!

I would rather read poetry than eat my dinner any day. It has been so all my life.

I do not believe in confining children to things they understand. They want, and they need, the thing they do not understand.