Who can reckon up the loss of moral power that arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing in itself, but only as a preparation f… - John Dewey

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.