Elaine > Elaine's Quotes

“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

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

“Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.”
― Oliver DeMille, A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century

“Books are better than television, the internet, or the computer for educating and maintaining freedom.
Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them. They have an advantage precisely because they slow down the process, allowing the reader to internalize, respond, react and transform. The ideas in books matter because time is taken to establish truth, and because the reader must take the time to consider each idea and either accept it or, if he rejects it, to think through sound reasons for doing so. A nation of people who write and read is a nation with the attention span to earn an education and free society if they choose.”
― Oliver DeMille

“The myth is that it is possible for one human being to educate another”
― Oliver DeMille

“I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“Do not dare not to dare.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

“Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
― L.M. Montgomery

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

“True friends are always together in spirit.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

“drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.”
― Carl R. Trueman, Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread: Taking Aim at Everyone

“I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works -- then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace -- at God's infinite cost -- then there's nothing he cannot ask of me.”
― Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

“We are not reading books merely to check off a list or to be able to say we have read them. We are reading to grow as persons, to know more that we may understand more, and ultimately, it is to be hoped, to act according to our greater wisdom.”
― Karen Glass

“Life is a story, and each of us has but one tale to live as valiantly as we can.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children

“How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe?
How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No. A woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
― G. K. Chesterton

“Instead of hungering after God, we’ve feasted at the table of cheap substitutes. No wonder we are left still hungry and longing for more.”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“Don't get me wrong. A good marriage, adequate financial resources, even a clean home and well-behaved children do bring some measure of happiness. However, temporal blessings, as wonderful as they may be, are only a taste of the real thing. They cannot sustain inner happiness any more than eating a scrumptious meal keeps tomorrow's hunger at bay. ”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“Holiness leads to wholeness and wholeness leads to happiness.”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“Jesus loves us too much to leave us thinking or believing that a rich and meaningful life is found in anything other than loving and serving him.”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“In her book The Places That Scare You, Chödrön writes, “When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.”
― Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.)”
― C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism