[57] "It is through frequent return to a subject and intense activity upon it for short periods, that it 'soaks in' and becomes influential in the building of character. Especially is this true if the principles of apperception and concentration are not forgotten by the teacher in working upon the disciplinary subjects." (Geo. P. Brown.)
[58] "The sense of beauty must be awakened in the soul in childhood if in later life he is to create the beautiful."—Reminiscences of Froebel, page 158.
[59] "As the gifts proceed from the first to the sixth, observation is demanded with increasing strictness, relativity more and more appreciated, and the opportunity afforded for endless manifestations of the constructive faculty, while all the time impressions are forming in the mind which in due time will bear rich fruits of mathematical and practical knowledge as well as æsthetic culture, for the dawning sense of the beautiful as well as of the true is gaining consistency and power." (Karl Froebel.)
[60] "What makes Froebel's gifts particularly instructive is, indeed, the fact that the most varied materials constantly lead to the same observations, but always under different conditions, so that we obtain the necessary repetitions without the dryness, the tiresomeness, the fatigue inseparable from constant unvaried iteration. But they also accustom the child to discover similarity in things that appear to differ, to find resemblance in contrasts, unity in diversity, connection in what appears unconnected."—H. Goldammer's The Kindergarten, page 109.
[61] "If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams,—the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."
[62] Pamphlet on the Seventh Gift. (Milton Bradley Co.)
[63] "The perception of the difference between a surface-extension and an extension in three dimensions begins late and is established slowly."—W. Preyer, The Mind of the Child, page 180.
[64] "With this law I give children a guide for creating, and because it is the law according to which they, as creatures of God, have themselves been created, they can easily apply it. It is born with them."—Reminiscences of Froebel, page 73.
[65] "The utility of this united action is not to be overlooked. The children all proceed according to one and the same law, they all work to produce one and the same result, the same purpose unites them all; in short, we see here in the children's play all that forms the base of every human society, all that renders it possible for men to act together in organized communities, such as are the family, the state, and the church. And to prepare for the future, to be mindful even amidst play of that which a child will afterwards require in order worthily to fill his place in the world, ought surely not to be among the least important ends of an education claiming to be in conformity with nature and reason."—H. Goldammer, The Kindergarten, page 135.
[66] "The slats form, in some sort, the transition from the surface-pictures of the laying-tablets to the lineal representations of the laying-sticks, but have this advantage over both tablets and sticks, that the forms constructed with them are not bound down to the surface of the table, but possess sufficient solidity to bear being removed from it."—H. Goldammer, The Kindergarten, page 155.