The child has other powers than ours, and the creation he achieves is no small one; it is everything.

The whole of mankind is one and only one, one race, one class and one society.

A child starts from nothing and advances alone. It is the child's reason about which the sensitive periods revolve. The reason provides the initial force and energy, and a child absorbs his first images to assist the reason and act on it.

For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

A child is a discoverer. He is an amorphous, splendid being in search of his own proper form.

It follows that at the beginning of his life the individual can accomplish wonders without effort and quite unconsciously.

Children have an anxious concern for living beings, and the satisfaction of this instinct fills them with delight. It is therefore easy to interest them in taking care of plants and especially of animals. Nothing awakens foresight in a small child such as this. When he knows that animals have need of him, that little plants will dry up if he does not water them, he binds together with a new thread of love today's passing moments with those of the morrow.