The knowledge which a child accumulates, and the ideas generated in his mind, during this period, are so important, that if we could imagine them to be afterwards obliterated, all the learning of a senior wrangler at Cambridge, or a first-classman at Oxford, would be as nothing to it, and would literally not enable its object to prolong his existence for a week.
It is in childhood that the mind is most open to impressions, and ready to be kindled by the first spark that falls into it.

Ideas are then caught quickly and live lastingly.

Thus Scott is said to have received, his first bent towards ballad literature from his mother's and grandmother's recitations in his hearing long before he himself had learned to read.

Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in after-life the images first presented to it.

The first thing continues for ever with the child.