With man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.
MARIA MONTESSORIWith man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe study of expression ought to form a part of the study of psychology, but it also comes within the province of anthropology because the habitual, life-long expressions of the face determine the wrinkles of old age, which are distinctly an anthropological characteristic.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe selfsame procedure which zoology, a branch of the natural sciences, applies to the study of animals, anthropology must apply to the study of man; and by doing so, it enrolls itself as a science in the field of nature.
MARIA MONTESSORII have for many years interested myself in the study of children from three years upwards. Many have urged me to continue my studies on the same lines with older children. But what I have felt to be most vital is the need for more careful and particularized study of the tiny child.
MARIA MONTESSORIWe all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.
MARIA MONTESSORITemptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe child’s mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind.
MARIA MONTESSORISuddenly, the child becomes very sensitive to the rudeness and humiliations which he had previously suffered with patient indifference.
MARIA MONTESSORIIt is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.
MARIA MONTESSORINoble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.
MARIA MONTESSORIIt would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted.
MARIA MONTESSORIThe task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity.
MARIA MONTESSORI