Caroline Pratt Quotes

Children...need most of the same things adults need--consideration, respect for their work, the knowledge that they and the things they do are taken seriously.

The most important phase of a child’s life was the beginning of it. He must be started right.

The child, unhampered, does not waste time.

Childhood’s work is learning, and it is in his play...that the child works at his job.

Children learn eagerly and well when they have need of the knowledge.

A school’s job [is] to begin education.

A lifetime is not too long to spend in learning about the world.

This was not the last time I was to spoil my own fun by asking questions.

The freest child is the child who is most interested in what he is doing, and at whose hand are the materials for his work or play.

It is only in retrospect that the high points of our lives rise up, flaunting banners.

Education [is] not an end in itself but [is] the first step in a progress which should continue during a lifetime.

The more closely he has observed the tugboat, the more deeply he has been stirred by it, and the more eagerly and vividly he will strive to recreate it, in building, in drawing, in words.

From the earliest days, we knew that it was not possible to do good work with the little children without the help of their parents.

In his play he is no longer an onlooker merely; he is a part of the busy world of adults. He is practicing to take his place in that world when he is grown. He is getting is education.

Children do not grow up all of a piece; look for the child of seven, especially to take many backward glances at the way he has come, while bounds and leaps unevenly ahead in his growth.

I thought about the nightmares, the anxiety, the depression, the nagging feeling that I was a pathetic coward. I looked at Caroline, saw the longing in her eyes, and knew I couldn’t shut my wife out any longer. I couldn’t be like my mother. It was time. It was time to open up.

Caroline also marveled at the resilience of

What I know of children I have learned from them. There have been moments when I have felt like Columbus discovering a new continent, and, conversely, many times when the uncharted world of childhood has presented no clear path by which a mere adult could find her way in it.

Caroline wasn’t particularly vain, but she loved her hair, and so did I. It was a reflection of her personality, beautiful but occasionally a bit on the unruly side. It was auburn and thick and curly and fell to the middle of her back. It turned a few shades lighter in the summer when she spent more time in the sun. Losing it was the side effect of chemotherapy that she dreaded the most.

stray dog or a cat?” “Maybe. Kids like water. Maybe she came around front and went to play by the creek.” A small creek ran all the way through town about a half block from Main Street. It cut right through the Monroes’ front yard. “There are people all around the creek, Caroline. If she was there, somebody would have found her.” Not only were there people all around the creek, there were people everywhere. The news about Lindsay was out, and

minute. Does he make you thumpy?” “Thumpy?” “You know, pitty pat. Fluttery. Heart pounding inside the chest when he comes into the room, that kind of thing. Caroline still does that to me.

I would turn, inevitably, to Caroline. She was my Athena, my Great Ameliorator. She knew how to soothe me, how to convince me that the world was not as dangerous as I might believe it to be. She reminded me always that love is most important in this world, that I was loved, and that despite my psychological torments I retained a far greater capacity for love than for violence. She would patiently reassure me that the path I’d chosen was the right path, that I wasn’t wasting my life, that not only was I relevant, I was necessary. I suspected at some level that she was placating me, but she always managed to do it in a manner that convinced me, at least for awhile, that what she was saying was true and that, as the cliché goes, everything would be all right.