I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is good to make muscle; as if conscience were not good for hands and legs.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Real action is in silent moments.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.