Great Throughts Treasury

"Play is the highest level of child development. It is the spontaneous expression of thought and feeling. It is the purest creation of the child's mind as it is also a pattern and copy of the natural life hidden in man and in all things."

"Only the conviction that it is the darkness within us which makes the darkness without, can restore the lost peace of our souls."

"Children are like tiny flowers; they are varied and need care, but each is beautiful alone and glorious when seen in the community of peers."

"I would educate human beings who with their feet stand rooted in God's earth . . ., whose heads reach even into heaven and there behold truth, in whose hearts are united both earth and heaven."

"If man is to attain fully his destiny, so far as earthly development will permit this, if he is to become truly an unbroken living unit, he must feel and know himself to be one, not only with God and humanity, but also with nature."

"If three hundred years after my death my method of education shall be completely established according to its idea, I shall rejoice in heaven."

"A child who plays and works thoroughly, with perseverance, until physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough, determined person, capable of self-sacrifice."

"In answering the question “What is the purpose of education?” I started at that time from the observation that man lives in a world of objects which influence him and which he wishes to influence, and so he must know these objects in their characteristics, their essence and their relation to one another and to mankind."

"In the treatment of the things of nature we very often take the right road, whereas in the treatment of man we go astray; and yet the forces that act in both proceed from the same source and obey the same law."

"Man is a creative being!"

"Man in his external manifestation, like the crystal, bearing within himself the living unity, shows at first more one-sidedness, individuality, and incompleteness, and only at a later period rises to all-sidedness, harmony, and completeness."

"Nothing comes without a struggle. Strife creates nothing by itself, it only clears the air. New seeds must be planted to germinate and grow, if we will have the tree of humanity blossom . . . We cannot tear the present from the past or from the future. Past, present, and future are the Trinity of time. In the children lies the seed-corn of the future!"

"Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul."

"Only the quiet, secluded sanctuary of the family can give back to us the welfare of mankind."

"Protect the new generation: do not let them grow up into emptiness and nothingness, to the avoidance of good hard work, to introspection and analyzation without deeds, or to mechanical actions without thought and consideration. Guide the young away from the harmful chase after outer things and the damaging passion for distraction."

"That which follows is always conditioned upon that which goes before."

"The character and purpose of these plays may be described as follows: They are a coherent system, starting at each stage from the simplest activity and progressing to the most diverse and complex manifestations of it. The purpose of each one of them is to instruct human beings so that they may progress as individuals and members of humanity is all its various relationships. Collectively they form a complete whole, like a many branched tree, whose parts explain and advance each other. Each is a self-contained whole, a seed from which manifold new developments may spring to cohere in further unity. They cover the whole field of intuitive and sensory instruction and lay the basis for all further teaching. They begin to establish spatial relationships and proceed to sensory and language training so that eventually man comes to see himself as a sentient, intelligent and rational being and as such strives to live."

"The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of women, the mothers, than in the possessors of power, or those of innovators who for the most part do not understand themselves. We must cultivate women, who are the educators of the human race else the new generation cannot accomplish its task."

"The union of family and school life is the indispensable requisite of education . . . if indeed men are ever to free themselves from the oppressive burden and emptiness of merely extraneously communicated knowledge heaped up in memory."

"The world of crystals proclaimed to me in distinct and unequivocal terms the laws of human life."

"What the spiritual eye sees inwardly in the world of thought and mind, it sees outwardly in the world of crystals."