“...the more we do for a child the less he will do for himself. If we give him watered-down material, many explanations, much questioning, if we over-moralize, depend on the work book to work the mind, what thinking is left for the child to do?”

“[A woman's] education should be as varied and perfect as possible. If for no other reason to enable her properly to educate and rear her own children. Whatever grand truths are planted in the mother's mind may take root in the next generation, and there grow, blossom, and shed their perfume on the world. The child receives the mother's very thought by intuition. If the mother's mind is weak and narrow in its range, the child is affected by this fact long before it finds meaning in the mother's words. But if the mother's mind is cultured and refined by study until her thoughts are grand and far-reaching, the child's soul will grow and expand under the mesmeric influence of these thoughts, as the plant grows under the influence of the sun.”

“But what if we find we don't suit?""Then ye'll do as the rest o' us and work at suiting.”

“A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it. What we say occupies a very thin surface, like the skin over a body of water. Beneath this, through the water itself, is what we see, sometimes clearly if the water is calm, sometimes vaguely if the water is troubled, and we imagine this vision to be the truth, clear or vague. But beneath this is yet another level. This is the level of what is and this level has nothing to do with what we say or what we see.”

“The freest child is the child who is most interested in what he is doing, and at whose hand are the materials for his work or play.”

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

“No matter how many precautions we take, none of us are truly in control. Only God can claim that kind of authority. All we can do is use the good sense he provides and trust him to guide us.”