Lesson

“ Finally there is the lesson which, though it involves both the intellect and the emotions, appeals primarily to the will and calls for action. There can be no question but that this is the type of lesson of greatest significance in religious education. ”

“ In writing out these questions, then, the first thing to be thought of is that consideration with which a good teacher will begin his lesson, but a poor teacher will close: "What is the main teaching of the lesson?"—as important, this "main teaching," as the compass to the sailor. What particular characteristic of God's noblemen is this lesson to strengthen in my scholars? Every teacher should know the power which is given by an ultimatum; by a decision, that is, as to the one thing which, no matter what else it wins or fails to win, that lesson must accomplish. ”

“ and let God our Father teach His own lesson, His own way. Let us try to learn it well, and learn it quickly; but do not let us fancy that He will ring the school bell, and send us to play before our lesson is learnt. ”

“ I will not urge more than one; but that one, because in it is a lesson more for ourselves than for others, and with such I would fain bring these lectures to a close. How solemn a truth we express when we name our work in this world our 'vocation,' or, which is the same in homelier Anglo-Saxon, our 'calling.' What a calming, elevating, ennobling view of the tasks appointed us in this world, this word gives us. ”

“ Oh! remember every period of human life has its own lesson, and you cannot learn that lesson in the next period. The boy has one set of lessons to learn, and the young man another, and the grown-up man another. ”

“ Reading, or even reciting, a lesson, may possibly teach nothing. "'Tis in vain that you make them read the life and doctrines of the Saviour, if you do not explain to them that he lived for their example, that he died to redeem them, and that those doctrines are to govern them in thought, word and deed." Care should be taken, to select the best plan of arranging the lesson. "The beginning should arrest attention, the middle inform the mind, and the end affect the heart." ”

“ From these rough rudiments, that thou shalt gain
A class more noble, and, advancing, soar
Where the sole lesson is a seraph's praise.
Yea, be a docile scholar, and so rise
Where mourning hath no place. ”

“ But when the child really assimilates the lesson of the kind action, and gives its penny, knowing why it does so, and having a feeling of pity in its heart, then the action is really the action of the self. ”

“ A lesson, this, deserving to be conned by a generation so opposite in tendency as our own: a lesson that in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we shall be clothed, but seek first {9} the spirit, and all these things will be added unto us. ”

“ Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is by order, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. ”

“ If, then, we have really learnt the lesson which He thus presses upon us, we shall feel something like reverence for every young life, as it begins its perilous and uncertain course on the sea of man’s experiences ”

“ Must learn harmony and inner peace through communication with Great One. World is great big schoolroom; all peoples equal but have different lessons to learn. Do not rebel or run away from lesson — will not learn, only make harder. Must be like de corn and bend wit' de wind. Be brave; look for lesson in all experiences. ”

“ Looking back, forty years afterwards, on this episode, one asked oneself painfully what sort of a lesson a young man should have drawn for the purposes of his education, from this world-famous teaching of a very great master. ”

“ Give an undivided attention to what you wish to learn, and be not satisfied with once repeating a lesson but meditate upon its contents until they are firmly engraven on your mind. Accustom yourselves always to render an account of what you read, either to yourself, or to some other person. Every night examine what you have learned during the day ”

“ His incessant labours, first to learn and then to practise, again to learn and again to practise, and again, and again, and again to learn and practise, so long as his physical energies could support the activity of his intellect, ought to convey to us all a lesson of profound humility, and a stimulus to exertion of the most active kind. ”

“ Come, lay aside that [Pg 47] kite you are making for this afternoon, and give another effort to get your lesson ready. Be in earnest, and you will soon learn it. To show you that it only requires perseverance, I will tell you a story. One of the dullest boys at a village school, more than thirty years ago, came up to repeat his lesson one morning, and, as usual, did not know it. 'Go to your seat, you blockhead!' said the teacher, pettishly. 'You will never be fit for anything but a scavenger. ”

“ To go from a hard lesson to a series of calisthenic exercises is to go from one kind of will training to another. Exhaustion of the will should be followed by the caprice and wild freedom of the recess. ”

“ What are the signs of intellectual promise, poetic, prosaic, philosophic, in the current generations, those actually learning their principal lesson, as one assumes, from the great University hard by? ”

“ But then the lesson so quickly learnt and understood, is not so easily put in practice. To apprehend quickly is, forsooth, the attribute of the mind, but correctly to execute that, requires the practice of a life. ”

“ Study every Sabbath school lesson in your closet, with these ends in view. Persevere in your efforts till you become mistress of the art of teaching.
3. Let your own heart be affected with the truth you are endeavoring to teach. Upon this, so far as your instrumentality is concerned, greatly depends your success. Unless you feel the force of the truth yourself, it will be very difficult for you to convince the children that you are in earnest. ”

“ No lesson, so far as our experience in teaching goes, interests and stimulates pupils more than this; and our experience of debating societies, in the higher forms of schools, forces upon us the conviction that such lessons are not more interesting than necessary. ”

“ A lesson which has been well planned will naturally end in the assignment of work to be done in preparation for the next recitation. In the discussion of any problem there must arise questions which cannot then be answered. ”

“ There's a lesson in everything—in the stones, the grass, the trees, the babbling brooks and the singing birds. Interpret the lesson for yourself, then teach it to others. Always be in earnest in your writing ”

“ Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers. And as they teach His lessons of joy and hope, their learning finally becomes complete. ”

“ And surely we may well be thankful to learn so wholesome a lesson, seeing how many sorrows we have often brought upon ourselves by the contrary disposition, and how faithful is the promise that "the meek He will guide in judgment and teach His way." ”

“ The young scholar wants courage to set about his lesson in time; the friend, or man of business, to answer a letter or acquire some point of useful information: and to go higher in the application of the maxim, it tells us, that to begin to do good leads on to continued improvement. ”

“ They are learning the hard lessons: constant care, constant thought, the hands, the knee, how often do I speak the word! How hard they try, and how fast they learn! I sometimes think it arrogant to teach ”

“ 'Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time. ”

“ The half-way recognition of this principle in the new Lectionary, in which such a freedom is allowed, provided the Lesson taken be one of those appointed for "some day in the same week," seems open to a suspicion of childishness. ”

“ In selecting, preparing, and arranging the stories, care has been taken that the thought is such as to be readily understood, and that on the whole it tends to awaken the higher emotions. The moral lesson involved should be absorbed rather than learned, and the teacher should beware of destroying the value of any lesson by dealing out moral pap. ”

“ And lessons the children had to do. However nice the person who is teaching you may be, lessons are lessons all the world over, and at their best are worse fun than peeling potatoes or lighting a fire. ”

“ For the lessons most imperatively needed by the mass of men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering endeavor,—for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing teacher than she. ”

“ In the same manner, it is because we foresee that, if lessons are properly given, and a young person has them clearly explained to him, certain benefits will result, and because we are apprised of the operation of persuasion, admonition, remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward, that we engage in the labours of education. ”

“ But the illusion that lessons are play cannot be indefinitely kept up, or if the illusion remains it is fraught with trouble. Duty and endurance, the power to go through drudgery, the strength of mind to persist in taking trouble, even where no interest is felt, the satisfaction of holding on to the end in doing something arduous, these things must be learned at some time during the years of education. ”

“ Stronger Lessons Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? ”

“ Under what circumstances you are born, how you are brought up, by what influences your earlier years have been surrounded—these form a succession of lessons, which you are bound to accept, because you know no better, and are taught no better. ”

“ Their every day lessons and instructions were so many lectures upon the nature of man, his true end, and the right use of his faculties; upon the immortality of the soul, its relation to God, the beauty of virtue, and its agreeableness to the divine nature; upon the necessity of temperance, fortitude, and generosity, and the shame and folly of indulging our passions. ”

“ A touch of the purified hand pacified the terrible emotions of the new comer, who in suppliant attitude awaited the command of the Beloved Guru. “Rise my child,” came from the lips of the Teacher; who, when he was obeyed continued:
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“Your progress is clogged by your indifference to duty. There can be no relations between us unless you disembody your desires and spiritualize every thought. Imprison the latter when they wander, and live to teach the lessons so often inculcated in your higher mind. Help your fellow-beings to better comprehend the capabilities of the inner, living Self. ”

“ "Nothing is easier to us who pass our time in the great school of Providence than to larn its lessons. ”

“ The first lessons which he is taught by those to whom his childhood is entrusted, tend, the greater part of them, to the same purpose. Their principal object is to teach him how to keep out of harm’s way. ”

“ Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them, than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes. ”

“ The object of the book briefly is, to re-inculcate these old-fashioned but wholesome lessons—which perhaps cannot be too often urged,—that youth must work in order to enjoy,—that nothing creditable can be accomplished without application and diligence,—that the student must not be daunted by difficulties, but conquer them by patience and perseverance,—and that, above all, he must seek elevation of character, without which capacity is worthless and worldly success is naught. ”

“ "That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked: "because they lessen from day to day." ”

“ In every thing you must read and consult the learned, by what means you may be enabled to pass your life in an agreeable manner: that insatiable desire may not agitate and torment you, nor the fear and hope of things that are but of little account: whether learning acquires virtue, or nature bestows it? What lessens cares, what may endear you to yourself? What perfectly renders the temper calm; honor or enticing lucre, or a secret passage and the path of an unnoticed life? ”

“ In near eight years’ experience, I have learned as much as others would in eighty, from my great talent at explanation, tact in the use of means, and immediate and invariable power over the minds of my pupils. My wish has been, to purify my own conscience, when near them; give clear views of the aims of this life; show them where the magazines of knowledge lie; and leave the rest to themselves and the Spirit, who must teach and help them to self-impulse. ”

“ Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. ”

“ We all know the trick of it. If we want to tell the substance of a conversation, a sermon, a lecture, we ‘go over it in our minds’ first and the mind puts its question to itself, the same question over and over again, no more than,—What next?—and lo, we have it, the whole thing complete! ”