Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students - Ellen G. White

may bend a young tree into almost any shape that
you choose, and if it remains and grows as you
have bent it, it will be a deformed tree, and will
ever tell of the injury and abuse received at your
hands. You may, after it has had years of growth,
try to straighten the tree, but all efforts will prove
unavailing. It will ever be a crooked tree.
This is the case with the minds of youth. They
should be carefully and tenderly trained in
childhood. They may be trained in the right
direction or in the wrong, and in their future lives
they will pursue the course in which they were
directed in youth. The habits formed in youth will
grow with the growth and strengthen with the
strength. ...
Physical Degeneracy
Man came from the hand of his Creator perfect
and beautiful in form, and so filled with vital force
that it was more than a thousand years before his
corrupt appetites and passions and general
violations of physical law were sensibly felt upon
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