...when infant reason grows apace, and calls for the kind hand of an assiduous care; delightful task! To rear the tender thought, to teach the young idea how to shoot, to pour the fresh instruction over the mind, to breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix the...

...Austen quotes only the lines celebrating the joy of instructing an innocent youth ("Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, / To teach the young idea how to shoot"), ironic verse in view of the fact that Catherine hardly seems to have received a solid education....

...without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. — CONFUCIUS Delightful task! To rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot. — JAMES THOMSON In a child's lunchbox, a mother's thoughts. — JAPANESE PROVERB I am beginning...