Boys' literature

“ During these informal hours, he talked to them of literature and art and showed them his prints and paintings. When the youths’ interest was aroused he lent them books, that they might read about the statues and buildings that had attracted their attention. At first it appeared a hopeless task to arouse any interest among these peasants in subjects not bearing on their abject lives. To talk with boys of the ideal, when their poor bodies were in need of food and raiment, seemed superfluous; but in time the charm worked, as it always will. ”

“ The four main objects of criticism, then, are the moral question, the evil of athleticism, the false scale of values that is inculcated at a Public School, and the subsequent conspiracy of silence. On the moral question the advanced idealists have talked more and to less purpose than on any other phase of school life. They have written of the discovery of the soul, of the unfolding of the flower. They have maintained that through art and literature the boy's emotional nature will be directed to a higher, a nobler conception of life. ”

“ I should study these subjects, and group about them such works, in history, biography, fiction, or poetry, as Professor Adams suggests.
I have not selected for special remark literature, rhetoric, and history because you are girls. If this were so, I should have followed the dictates of society, and added the study of languages. Young women and young men need no particular educational differences. It has been proved that girls are as capable of excelling in any study as boys are. ”

“ When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature. ”

“ Here the boys are in touch with a real, living character, acted upon and developed, through the moulding pressure of life itself—from first to last the aim of the story is the boy; and yet the moral outcome is simple, natural, inevitable and manly; it appeals to the common sense which is strong in boys. ”

“ Most boys of great ability and strong passion write verses—it is Nature's relief to brain and heart at the critical turning age. Most boys thus gifted do so; a few do not, and out of those few Fate selects the great men of action,—those large luminous characters that stamp poetry on the world's prosaic surface. ”

“ He had the rare art of hitting off boy-nature, with just that spice of wickedness in it without which a boy is not a boy. His heroes have always the charm of bounding, youthful energy, and youth’s invincible hopefulness, and the constant flow of good spirits which have made the boys of all time perennially interesting. ”

“ He should be able to enter into their plans, hopes, and aspirations. He should learn to look upon life as they do. Boys object to be written down to. A boy's heart opens to the man or writer who understands him. ”

“ In these the boy, endowed with an active life of his own, can view the latter as in a mirror and learn to appreciate its value. This is the chief reason why boys are so fond of stories, legends and tales ”

“ Indeed Boys must have been one of the great book collectors of his time. Boys's works are full to overflowing of homely proverbs, of allusions to the manners and customs of the time, of curious words and expressions. ”

“ Because of natural, physical, social, educational, moral, and religious conditions, the boy is taught those underlying principles which determine character. The harder things a boy does or endures, the stronger man he will become; the more unselfish and noble things he does, the better man he will become. ”

“ The needful thing is to find stories in which the heroes have the characteristics boys so much admire—unquenchable courage, immense resourcefulness, absolute fidelity, conspicuous greatness. We believe the books of EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY measurably well meet this challenge. ”

“ This little book, which still appeals to the juvenile mind,—a new edition was put out as lately as 1899,—has had a singular charm, not only for boys, but for those grown men who never quite lose the heart of boyhood. ”

“ I was not interested, and the teacher did not make it interesting.
[322] In the boys' books I was fond of reading I came across all sorts of heroes, and I sympathized with them all. The boy who ran away to sea; the boy who delighted in the society of ranchmen and cowboys; the stage-struck boy, whose ambition was to drive a pasteboard chariot in a circus; the boy who gave up his holidays in order to earn money for books; the bad boy who played tricks on people; the clever boy who invented amusing toys for his blind little sister—all these boys I admired. ”

“ But master and boys, when they look around them, begin to tremble, for their place is old, it is beautiful, it adorns the street, it is sacred to the memory of two hundred years of Boy—thirty generations of Boy. ”

“ The man, therefore, who draws direct conclusions from a school story, would imagine that a schoolboy spends his entire time in form ragging masters, and, when not ragging, in cribbing, and that the rest of his time is divided between the fierce rivalries of the football field and the intrigues of romantic friendships. ”

“ In this book I have endeavored to relate the story of a boy's early experiences in college life—a boy who was neither unnaturally good nor preternaturally bad, wholesome, earnest, impulsive, making just such mistakes as a normal boy would make, and yet earnest, sincere, and healthy. We all have known just such boys and are grateful that they are neither uncommon nor unknown. ”

“ Look at the miserable smattering of general information—just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last lesson of 'Obey the powers that be'—whatever they be; leave us alone in our comforts, and starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's will. And then, if a boy does show talent in school, do they help him up in life? ”

“ The boy has, indeed, learned his lesson, for he has gone out from the Reform School to lead an honest life. All boys are fundamentally alike, and this same appeal to the sympathetic imagination must always remain our chief reliance in combating the predatory and destructive impulses of normal boyhood. ”

“ The best things that the old Book talks about are the things the boys love in one another. They don’t always think of the Book, but they love the fruits of the Spirit in one another. They love truth, honour, courage, humility, friendship, loyalty. ”

“ As so often happens with preconceived ideas, the only duties of prefectship which present any terrors to the imagination of the new boy turn out singularly simple. Most boys are self-conscious; they dread a silence, they hate being conspicuous. ”

“ In this small volume the boys of many lands and races whose stories are told, have been selected not because they later became famous men, although some of them did, but because each one achieved something noteworthy as a boy. ”

“ I have seen boys who, in any other country, would have been in a school-room, or at play, present themselves regularly at the tertulia, and throwing off the character of boys, act the part of grown-up men. ”

“ We have men-boys and boy-men. But where are the veritable boys—the boys with eager hearts, throbbing pulses, buoyant spirits, gay hopes, glowing fancies, unreasoning beliefs, and ready faith—the boys with the young thoughts and the young feelings gushing through them like the juices of young life—the boys who hail their stage of existence joyfully, gathering its pleasures, battling its sorrows, and venting its impulses ”

“ When such a friendship is ended either by the appearance of a rival, or more frequently through the inclination of the smaller boy, who has risen in the school and feels that such a position is beneath his dignity, the elder boy feels an immense gap in his life. ”

“ Boys enter heartily into the admiration of noble characters—happy boys!—and they have little taste for critical discussion of political motives and intrigues. They can more easily take in the image of one leading personage at a time, and identify themselves with his fortunes ”

“ Every sentence arrests, and the sympathy with boy-life, as well as the compelling earnestness of the diction, must grip any boy-audience in quite an unusual manner. The style is manly, non-sentimental, and is suitable for boys aged eleven to sixteen. ”

“ He held that fully as much attention should be paid to the development of manly character in the boys as to mental training, and that the prime object of a school was not to turn out scholars, but to turn out men. ”

“ Home and school present to the average boy two watertight compartments. They are different lives, a different technique is required. And human nature has at least one property of the chameleon.
A schoolboy sets out, therefore, to discover school life for himself. He knows what his parents expect him to make of it; he has a fairly shrewd idea of what his schoolmaster expects him to make of it. It remains for him to investigate school life as his companions have made it. ”

“ Have you any theories about the teaching of boys?"
"None whatever," replied Arthur Robinson frankly.
"Good! There is only one way to teach boys. Keep them in order: don't let them play the fool or go to sleep; and they will be so bored that they will work like niggers merely to pass the time. That's education in a nutshell. ”

“ He lets his parents think what they like and his schoolmasters think what they like. He goes his own way. And it is thus that school life as it is, differs so enormously from the traditional concept of it. There must be always a gulf between the reality and the imagined idea. But in public school life the gulf is between, not the schoolboy reality and his idea of it, but between the schoolboy reality, and the confused idea of it that is held by parents and masters. ”

“ There is a line of classics for youth—the books your fathers read—the books you want to read—the books the boys and girls will read and like as long as the English language endures. They have done more to shape the mind of American boys for the last fifty years than any others. ”

“ Boy, like other boys, did just what he was ordered to do, learned just what he was required to learn, with steady dogged persistence but no enthusiasm, and spared no pains to grind himself down into the approved ordinary pattern of an English college boy, and for this he made a complete sacrifice of all his originality. ”

“ It will be an immense success, but I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story; grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do, and if you should put it forth as a story of boys' character from the grown-up point of view you give the wrong key to it. ”

“ There should constantly be presented to him the books the boy likes best, yet always the books that will be best for the boy. As a matter of fact, however, the boy’s taste is being constantly vitiated and exploited by the great mass of cheap Juvenile literature. ”

“ It is remarkable how early boys begin to trim each other into manly character; they instantly discover and attack any little weakness, and with rough and ready hand or tongue make the weakling or the upstart ashamed of himself. ”

“ The best story for boys is the one that will help them most and give them the greatest pleasure—the story that will make them more manly, more self reliant, more generous, more noble and sweeter in disposition. Such a story I have aimed to make The Boy Broker. ”

“ The boys are chosen for the strength of their lungs, and their taste and judgment in delighting the ears and lulling the senses of this amiable harmonic society; they succeed each other in chanting during the whole day, to the great delight and gratification of their bristly audience, who seem fully to appreciate the merits of the performers. ”

“ The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. ”

“ They have themselves spoken when juniors with bated breath of supposed 'cases.' They would like to be spoken of like that themselves, to feel themselves moving in an atmosphere of conjecture and intrigue, to gather an added sense of their own importance. ”

“ He could only be hunted out by people all wrought through with human experience, men and women who would give the world to find him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy—by some special kind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, or by diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. ”