Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
John RuskinRead
Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.
Interpretation
Improving education can reduce crime and the need for prisons.
John Ruskin's quote suggests that by focusing on reforming and enhancing our educational systems, we can significantly diminish the social issues that lead to crime and subsequently reduce the need for prisons. It emphasizes the idea that a better education leads to better choices and opportunities, ultimately contributing to a healthier society.
In practice
During a community meeting, one might say this quote to advocate for increased funding for schools.
Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.
In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.
To be able to ask a question clearly is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered.
See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.
A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
I am terminally sentimental about graduations. They are more individual than weddings, more conscious than christenings, or bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs. They are almost as much a step into the unknown as funerals-though I assure you, there is life after graduation.
Peace is what every human being is craving for, and it can be brought about by humanity through the child.
What does education do, what does it have to offer, when deprived of its necessary partner, the future, and face instead with - no future at all?
It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.
Reading to our children and our grandchildren is something we can all try to do every day of the year. Not only does it give us pleasure but it leads them on a voyage of discovery and enrichment that only books can bring.
It is the power of words and books - explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals - that is the greatest weapon in the missionary's arsenal.
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