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" To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator. "

Maria Montessori

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" All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called 'mate,' to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity. "

Maria Montessori

" We await the successsive births in the soul of the child. We give all possible material, that nothing may lack to the groping soul, and then we watch for the perfect faculty to come, safeguarding the child from interruption so that it may carry its efforts through. "

Maria Montessori

" It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand - that is what is necessary. "

Maria Montessori

" Many people must have noticed the intense attention given by children to the conversation of grown-ups when they cannot possibly be understanding a word of what they hear. They are trying to get hold of words, and they often demonstrate this fact by repeating joyously some word which they have been able to grasp. "

Maria Montessori

" When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity. "

Maria Montessori

" We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading. "

Maria Montessori

" Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two 'languages.' It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves. "

Maria Montessori

" Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her. "

Maria Montessori

" If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course. "

Maria Montessori

" Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading. "

Maria Montessori

" When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education. "

Maria Montessori

" There are two 'faiths' which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one's inner life, the second to one's life in society. "

Maria Montessori

" If the whole of mankind is to be united into one brotherhood, all obstacles must be removed so that men, all over the surface of the globe, should be as children playing in a garden. "

Maria Montessori

" It is not true that I invented what is called the Montessori Method... I have studied the child; I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it, and that is what is called the Montessori Method. "

Maria Montessori

" The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convictions, his own affections. "

Maria Montessori

" To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task, the whole life must cooperate. In this sense, life itself is the only preparation for drawing. Once we have lived, the inner spark of vision does the rest. "

Maria Montessori

" It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted. "

Maria Montessori

" We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses. "

Maria Montessori

" Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean. "

Maria Montessori

" There can be no 'graduated exercises in drawing' leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit. "

Maria Montessori

" How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see? "

Maria Montessori

" Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life. "

Maria Montessori

" All the movements of our body are not merely those dictated by impulse or weariness; they are the correct expression of what we consider decorous. Without impulses, we could take no part in social life; on the other hand, without inhibitions, we could not correct, direct, and utilize our impulses. "

Maria Montessori

" The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon. "

Maria Montessori

" Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son. "

Maria Montessori

" The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature. "

Maria Montessori

" Indeed there are powers in the small child that are far greater than is generally realized, because it is in this period that the construction, the building-up, of man takes place, for at birth, psychically speaking, there is nothing at all - zero! "

Maria Montessori

" With man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit. "

Maria Montessori

" Observation, very general and wide-spread, has shown that small children are endowed with a special psychic nature. This shows us a new way of imparting education! "

Maria Montessori

" The hand is, in the highest degree, a human characteristic. It is man's organ of grasp and of the sense of touch, while in animals these two functions are relegated to the mouth. "

Maria Montessori