“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”

“The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”

“Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”

“And so take away his work, which was his life [. . .] and all his glory and his great deeds? Make a child and a dotard of him? Keep him to myself at that cost? Make him so mine that he was no longer his?”

“There is a desire within each of us,in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart.We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied,and it never dies.We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the Human desire for Love.Every person in this Earth yearns to love,to be loved, to know love.Our true identity, our reason for beingis to be found in this desire. Love is the "why" of life,why we are functioning at all.I am convincedit is the fundamental energy of the human spirit.the fuel on which we run,the wellspring of our vitality. And grace, which is the flowing,creative activity, of love itself,is what makes all goodness possible. Love should come first,it should be the beginning of,and the reason for everything.”

“Society was calling to its accomplished child to come, to be taken care of, to be instructed, to be judged, to be condemned; it called him to return to that rubbish heap from which he had wandered away, so that justice could be done.”