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Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.

To be able to do a thing, you must begin to do it, and keep on doing it until the thing is mastered.

These possibilities of mental development are still further increased when the man makes his own records. This leads to closer attention, to more interest in the work, and to a realization of the man as to what the record really means, and what value it represents.

he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack

You must make up your mind to steady and earnest work. You must be content to get on slowly if you only get on thoroughly.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.

With tireless energy and eager zeal, colored women have, since their emancipation, been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race, as though upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of this great task.

And yet, in spite of the opposition encountered, and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these lines has never been surpassed by that of any people in the history of the world.

A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge.

Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined.

Give us labour and the training which fits for labour! We demand this, not for ourselves alone, but for the race.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases.

To stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power.

To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

In the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities are found the most useful

Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.

Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy and encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not the least valuable part of my education.

The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.

Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game.

Practice makes perfect.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.