Quote Party

Our Charlotte Mason book club hosted a party tonight, and we were each to bring a bookmark or ornament displaying a Charlotte Mason quote. This was a fun, new and inexpensive way to do a Christmas party, and we all enjoyed our monthly Starbucks and CM discussion.

I have included some of the quotes below. You'll notice the blatant disregard for proper bibliographical formatting, and complete lack of specific book & page number references. Tough. If you need the reference, Google it.

The quote I brought, on a little pink bookmark:
"All beautiful and noble possibilities are present in everyone."

The quote I received, inside a cookie-cutter Christmas ornament:
"Nourish a child daily with loving, right, and noble ideas...which may bear fruit in his life."

Several chose the "CM Motto":
"I am . . . a child of God, a gift to my parents and my country. I'm a person of great value because God made me.
I can . . . do all things through Christ who strengthens me. God has made me able to do everything required of me.
I ought . . . to do my duty to obey God, to submit to my parents and everyone in authority over me, to be of service to others, and to keep myself healthy with proper food and rest so my body is ready to serve.
I will . . . resolve to keep a watch over my thoughts and choose what's right even if it's not what I want."

A few of my favorite CM quotes, way too long for a bookmark:
"The idea that vivifies teaching. . . is that 'Education is a Science of Relations;' by which phrase we mean that children come into the world with a natural [appetite] for, and affinity with, all the material of knowledge; for interest in the heroic past and in the age of myths; for a desire to know about everything that moves and lives; about strange places and strange peoples; for a wish to handle material and to make; a desire to run and ride and row and do whatever the law of gravitation permits. Therefore. . . we endeavor that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many possible of the interests proper to him; not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge, with a great field before him which in all his life he will not be able to explore. In this conception we get that 'touch of emotion' which vivifies knowledge, for it is probably that we feel only as we are brought into our proper vital relations."

"The child's mind is not a blank slate, or a bucket to be filled. It is a living thing and needs knowledge to grow. As the stomach was designed to digest food, the mind is designed to digest knowledge and needs no special training or exercises to make it ready to learn."

"'Thou hast set my feet in a large room' should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking -- the strain would be too great -- but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest... 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?"

Update: I forgot my favorite one, but found it in Javamom's review of our evening:
"Mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them."