Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Education
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I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.
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Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
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The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.
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I pay the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son.
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The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.
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We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in education.
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There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
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I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each ofthese works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.
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The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
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The secret in education lies in respecting the student.
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Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
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Teach the children! It is painting in fresco.
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That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.
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The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, whohas; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues. But the man who aims to speak as books enable, as synods use, as the fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. Let him hush.
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An eminent teacher of girls said, "the idea of a girl's education, is, whatever qualifies them for going to Europe.
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Universities are of course hostile to geniuses.
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It is contended that those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.
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Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.
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What we have learned from other becomes our own reflection.
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Education should be as broad as man.
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The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.
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The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of tune, isto make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them every thing which they need.
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The whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible.
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If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
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One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.
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Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.
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The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, "All summer in the field, and all winter in the study." And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.
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There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
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The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.
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