“The education of our children is never out my mind. Train them to virtue. Habituate them to industry, activity, and spirit. Make them consider every vice as shameful and unmanly. Fire them with ambition to be useful. Make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or ornamental knowledge or accomplishment. Fix their ambition upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones.” — from The Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams During the Revolution
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“I had studied a dozen languages, delved into literature and art, and had spent my best years in libraries reading all sorts of material that fell into my hands, from Newton’s Principia to the novels of Paul de Kock, and felt that most of my life had been squandered. But it did not take long before I recognized that it was the best thing I could have done.” — from My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
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“This lesson wasn’t all Roosevelt got out of a sickly childhood. He got something else that ultimately had an equally profound influence on his later life, namely, a love of literature and learning.” — from TR: The Last Romantic by HW Brands
It certainly sucks to be sick — but it may be one of the only times I feel like laying in my bed and reading is the 100% absolute best use of my time. TR seemed to get a handle on that pretty early in his life.
