At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.

"For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk . . .What it does mean is to be taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life."

"When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination."

Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain have any other effect than a hardening one.

"The educator must above all understand how to wait; to reckon all effects in the light of the future, not of the present."