touchstone archives
Commonplaces
Piquant excerpts lifted from Touchstone editors' own reading & listening.
The education of women must be important, as the formation of character for the first seven or eight years of life seems to depend almost entirely upon them. It is certainly in the power of a sensible and well educated mother to inspire, within that period, such tastes and propensities as shall nearly decide the destiny of the future man; and this is done, not only by the intentional exertions of the mother, but by the gradual and insensible imitation of the child; for there is something extremely contagious in greatness and rectitude of thinking, even at that age; and the character of the mother with whom he passes his early infancy is always an event of the utmost importance to the child.
—Sydney Smith
from "Female Education" in The Selected Writings of Sydney Smith (ed. W. H. Auden, 1956)
— Family — Commonplaces #10 — May/June 2020 —
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