Charlotte Mason Quotes; 16 Verses on Natural Education

Are you a fan of the Charlotte Mason education method? This article contains 16 Charlotte Mason quotes to brighten your day.

Charlotte Mason was a British educator, who lived in Ambleside, England. She founded a training school for governesses and wrote many books about her education theories. Her method remains popular, to this day. Ambleside Online is a well known free curriculum for homeschoolers. You can still buy her books, such as Home Education* by Charlotte Mason. However, there are many more modern works based on her ideas. Such as Twaddle-Free Education* by Deborah Taylor-Hough.

Charlotte Mason Quotes on Studying

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

“There is no education but self-education.”

“Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.”

“Let the parent ask, ‘Why?’ and the child produces the answer if he can. After he has turned the matter over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him – and he will remember it – the reason why.”

Charlotte Mason Quotes on Independence

“An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing.”

“Every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of him for the moment another Newton.”

“Wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.”

“Of all the joyous motives of school life, the love of knowledge is the only abiding one; the only one which determines the scale, so to speak, upon which the person will hereafter live.”

“I think we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the “fit” book; and this for two reasons. What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated.”

Charlotte Mason Quotes on Nature

“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.”

“We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”

“Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out, ‘Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?’ and so on.”

Charlotte Mason Quotes on Reading

“The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.”

“Children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, at other times – a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their storybooks.”

“Composition is as natural as jumping and running to children who have been allowed the due use of books.”

“One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books. The best is not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough. And if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child’s intellectual life.”