Luther Burbank Quotes

Exposing children to nature, especially at an early age, keeps them grounded.

Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature

Being close to nature, in general, helps boost a child's attention span.

Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.

Children need nature for the healthy development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity.

Question four: What book would you give to every child? Answer: I wouldn't give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads. That said, if you're going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.

"The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts - in short," said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, "they are weaned..."

Sports is good for health and for children, it gives them manhood, courage, teaches them team work and coordination. Sports is something that is so crucial, it makes everything.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

Live simply and virtuously, true to your nature, drawing no line between what is spiritual and what is not.

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.

Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.

Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel... Think not your children will practise what they do not see you do. You are their model picture, and they will copy what you are... will seldom learn habits which they see you despise, or walk in paths in which you do not walk yourself.

Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature... Do not terrify them in early life with the fear of an after-world. Never was a child made more noble and good by the fear of a hell.

Studies of children in playgrounds with both green areas and manufactured play areas found that children engaged in more creative forms of play in the green areas.

To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?

His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.

As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

No good water comes from a muddy spring. No sweet fruit comes from a bitter seed.

Child hunger and child obesity are really just two sides of the same coin. Both rob our children of the energy, the strength and the stamina they need to succeed in school and in life. And that, in turn, robs our country of so much of their promise.

Few things make the life of a parent more rewarding and sweet as successful children.