We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.

Discipline must come through liberty. . . . We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.