The question is not, – how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education – but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?
We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.
Look on education as something between the child’s soul and God. Modern Education tends to look on it as something between the child’s brain and the standardized test.
An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing.
We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.
Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.
The indwelling of Christ is a thought particularly fit for the children, because their large faith does not stumble at the mystery, their imagination leaps readily to the marvel, that the King Himself should inhabit a little child’s heart.
Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.
Every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of him for the moment another Newton.
Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.
Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child, the knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe, – the knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making.
Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend...
Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind.
Let children have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times; heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales, even where it is all impossible, and they know it, and yet they believe.
Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.