#self-formation

If what we have to do is to help man’s mental life, then the first lesson we must learn is that the tiny child’s absorbent mind finds all its nutriment in its surroundings.

It is also why being a parent [and working with children] is so interesting and challenging; it helps us to understand human nature generally, and the self in particular, as few life experiences can.

The teacher, when they begin work in our schools, must have a kind of faith that the child will reveal themself through work.

If the child is not yet master of their own actions, if they cannot obey even their own will, so much the less can they obey the will of someone else.

The truth is that the personality can only develop by making use of its own powers.

Reliable guidance, and the possibility of checking as we go, are the indispensable conditions for getting anywhere.

So it is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose, which it truly has.

We cannot teach this kind of morality to children of three, but experience can