Charlotte M. Mason Quotes & Sayings

There is no education but self-education. — Charlotte M. Mason

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

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 M. Mason

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 M. 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 M. 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 M. 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 M. Mason

Like Ariel released from his tree prison, a beautiful human being leaps out of many a human prison at the touch of sympathy . — Charlotte M. Mason

Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind. — Charlotte M. 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 M. 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 M. 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 M. Mason

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