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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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

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To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.

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