For those unfamiliar, Cuore (the Italian word for "heart") is a 1886 novel by Edmondo de Amicis. There is a fine English translation at Project Gutenberg.
The book describes a year in the life of Enrico Bottini, a 9-year-old schoolboy in the third form of an elementary school in Turin, in the north of Italy.
De Amicis’ aim was to teach moral and civic values, such as kindness, compassion, humility, respect, love for family and friends, solidarity between social classes, work ethic and patriotism. He used very moving plots and language: this book at times can be a tear-fest if you are susceptible to sentimentality, sometimes tears of sadness but often because of feel-good emotion. If you don’t like sentimentality you are not going to like the book. It is utterly and unashamedly sentimental, hence its title, and also didactic. The book is easy to mock now, being too sentimental, preachy, utopic and idealistic for modern sensitivities, depicting a world where there is clear right and wrong instead of moral complexity, but if you can see it in its context and don’t mind that it’s old-fashioned you may find it very readable, moving and charming.
This quote is part of a pep talk Enrico's father gives him one morning when he doesn't want to go to school because it's boring.
(…) Reflect in the morning, when you set out, that at that very moment, in your own city, thirty thousand other boys are going like yourself, to shut themselves up in a room for three hours and study. Think of the innumerable boys who, at nearly this precise hour, are going to school in all countries. Behold them with your imagination, going, going, through the lanes of quiet villages; through the streets of noisy towns, along the shores of rivers and lakes; here beneath a burning sun; there amid fogs; in boats, in countries which are intersected with canals; on horseback on the far-reaching plains; in sledges over the snow; through valleys and over hills; across forests and torrents, over the solitary paths of mountains; alone, in couples, in groups, in long files, all with their books under their arms, clad in a thousand ways, speaking a thousand tongues. From the most remote schools in Russia, almost lost in the ice, to the furthermost schools of Arabia, shaded by palm-trees, millions and millions, all going to learn the same things, in a hundred varied forms. Imagine this vast, vast throng of boys of a hundred races, this immense movement of which you form a part, and think, if this movement were to cease, humanity would fall back into barbarism; this movement is the progress, the hope, the glory of the world. Courage, then, little soldier of the immense army. Your books are your arms, your class is your squadron, the field of battle is the whole earth, and the victory is human civilization. Be not a cowardly soldier, my Enrico.
by farseer4