The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility, and evil with activity, as often happens in old-time discipline . . . A room in which all the children move about usefully, intelligently, and voluntarily, without committing any rough or rude act, would seem to me a classroom very well disciplined indeed.

The instructions of the teacher consist then merely in a hint, a touch-enough to give a start to the child. The rest develops of itself.

One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child possesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly perfect this inner life over a long period of time.

No one can help us to achieve the intimate isolation by which we find our secret worlds, so mysterious, rich and full. If others intervene, it is destroyed. This degree of thought, which we attain by freeing ourselves from the external world, must be fed by the inner spirit, and our surroundings cannot influence us in any way other than to leave us in peace.

There are many things which no teacher can convey to a child of three, but a child of five can do it with ease.

Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him.

It is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single species.