“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

If you’ve never eaten while crying you don’t know what life tastes like.

The deed is everything; the fame is nothing.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

And all must follow in my wake.

A person hears only what they understand.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.

Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and – if at all possible – speak a few sensible words.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.

Baby cuddles are the best.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

One of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education.

I was an only child. I did have kind of like a lonely existence.

Reading makes all other learning possible. We have to get books into our children’s hands early and often.

Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.