Charlotte M. Mason > Quotes

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”
― Charlotte Mason, School Education: Developing A Curriculum

“Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.”
― Charlotte Mason

“Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.”
― Charlotte Mason, The Original Home Schooling Series by Charlotte Mason

“The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.”
― Charlotte Mason

“If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play!”
― Charlotte Mason

“This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to Almighty God-we do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.”
― Charlotte Mason

“...my object is to show that the chief function of the child--his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life--is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses...”
― Charlotte Mason

“Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind.”
― Charlotte Mason

“There is no education but self-education.”
― Charlotte Mason

“Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.”
― Charlotte Mason

“Having found the book which has a message for us, let us not be guilty of the folly of saying we have read it. We might as well say we have breakfasted, as if breakfasting on one day should last us for every day! The book that helps us deserves many readings, for assimilation comes by slow degrees.”
― Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

“...like Ariel released from his tree prison, a beautiful human being leaps out of many a human prison at the touch of sympathy .”
― Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

“Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.”
― Charlotte Mason

“The child brings with him into the world, not character, but disposition. He has tendencies which may need only to be strengthened, or, again, to be diverted or even repressed. His character — the efflorescence of the man wherein the fruit of his life is a-preparing — is original disposition, modified, directed, expanded by education; by circumstances; later, by self-control and self-culture; above all, by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost, even where that agency is little suspected, and as little solicited.”
― Charlotte Mason, Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series Volume 2 - Parents and Children

“A child gets moral notions from the fairy-tales he delights in, as do his elders from tale and verse.”
― Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

“The formation of habits is education, and education is the formation of habits.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, Home Education

“The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, The Original Home School Series

“And perhaps it is not too beautiful a thing to believe in this redeemed world, that, as the babe turns to his mother though he has no power to say her name, as the flowers turn to the sun, so the hearts of the children turn to their Saviour and God with unconscious delight and trust. Nursery”
― Charlotte M. Mason, The Original Home School Series

“Children should know that such things are before them also; that whenever they want to do wrong capital reasons for doing the wrong thing will occur to them. But, happily, when they want to do right no less cogent reasons for right doing will appear. After abundant practice in reasoning and tracing out the reasons of others, whether in fact or fiction, children may readily be brought to the conclusions that reasonable and right are not synonymous terms; that reason is their servant, not their ruler,—one of those servants which help Mansoul in the governance of his kingdom.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series Volume 6 - Towards A Philosophy of Education

“And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children.”
― Charlotte Mason

“We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.”
― Charlotte Mason

“None of us can be proof against the influences that proceed from the persons he associates with. Wherefore, in books and men, let us look out for the best society, that which yields a bracing and wholesome influence. We all know the person for whose company we are the better, though the talk is only about fishing or embroidery.”
― Charlotte Mason

“The person of winning personality attracts his pupils who will do anything for his sake and are fond and eager in all their ways, docile to the point where personality is submerged, and they live on the smiles, perish on the averted looks, of the adored teacher. Parents look on with a smile and think that all is well; but Bob or Mary is losing that growing time which should make a self-dependent, self-ordered person, and is day by day becoming a parasite who can go only as he is carried, the easy prey of fanatic or demagogue.”
― Charlotte Mason, Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series, Vol. 6: Towards a Philosophy of Education

“One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life.”
― Charlotte Mason

“Who can take the measure of a child? The Genie of the Arabian tale is nothing to him. He, too, may be let out of his bottle and fill the world. But woe to us if we keep him corked up.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series

“our power to conduct our relations with other people depends upon our power of conducting our relations with ourselves. Every”
― Charlotte M. Mason, Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series

“It is worth while to point out the differing characters of a system and a method, because parents let themselves be run away with often enough by some plausible ‘system,’ the object of which is to produce development in one direction—of the muscles, of the memory, of the reasoning faculty—were a complete all-round education. This easy satisfaction arises from the sluggishness of human nature, to which any definite scheme is more agreeable than the constant watchfulness, the unforeseen action, called for when the whole of a child’s existence is to be used as the means of his education.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, The Original Home School Series

“That parents should make over the religious education of their children to a Sunday School is, no doubt, as indefensible as if they sent them for their meals to a table maintained by the public bounty.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, The Original Home School Series

“It is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates. ‘Know thyself,’ exhorted the wise man, in season and out of season; and it will be well with us when we understand that to acquaint a child with himself––what he is as a human being––is a great part of education.”
― Charlotte Mason

“To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is, no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world.”
― Charlotte M. Mason, Parents and Children [Illustrated]