Leo Tolstoy
Circle of Reading
Translated by Dmitry Fadeyev

January 10

The basis of education is the establishment of a relationship to the universal source and a code of conduct that results from this relationship.

1

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a huge millstone were hung around his neck and that he were sunk in the depths of the sea.

Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes!

— Matthew 18:6–7

2

As we educate children, we must understand that we are educating them not for a life in the present, but for a life in a better future state of the human race, i.e. for a life under different, better conditions. Parents naturally educate their children so that they are ready only for the real world, even though it is bad. But by educating children for a better world order of the future, we thereby improve the future order of the world.

— After Kant

3

To educate a human being fit for the future, we must educate him in light of a wholly perfect human ideal—only then will the pupil be a worthy member of that generation in which he will have to live.

4

To make a child aware of the divine nature within him seems to me the main obligation of parents and educators.

— Channing

5

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things; not merely pure, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

— John Ruskin


The basis of education is religious education, and meanwhile in our Christian world things are taught that no one believes in. Children are perceptive and see this and they believe neither the things they are taught, nor those who teach them.