Quotes by Professors - Page 10

George Malcolm: half white, half black, with messy tousled hair, rumpled and tugged between kind of curly and extremely curly. Once, a year or so before, he'd been at our house and he'd pulled out a lock of his hair and used it to teach me about eddies and helixes. It's a circular current into a central station, he'd explained, giving me one to hold. I pulled on the spring. Nature is full of the same shapes, he said, taking me to the bathroom sink and spinning on the top and pointing out the way the water swirled down the drain. Taking me to the bookshelf and flipping open a book on weather and showing me a cyclone. Then a spiral galaxy. Pulling me back to the bathroom sink, to my glass jar of collected seashells, and pointing out the same curl in a miniature conch. See? he said, holding the seashell up to his hair. Yes! I clapped. His eyes were warm with teaching pleasure. It's galactic hair, he said, smiling.At school, George was legendary already. He was so natural at physics that one afternoon the eighth-grade science teacher had asked him to do a preview of the basics of relativity, really fast, for the class. George had stood up and done such a fine job, using a paperweight and a yardstick and the standard-issue school clock, that the teacher had pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. I'd like to be the first person to pay you for your clarity of mind, the teacher had said. George used the cash to order pizza for the class. Double pepperoni, he told me later, when I'd asked.
Aimee Bender
And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?
Alexander McCall Smith
There are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them... Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?
Gary D. Schmidt
All we’re trying to do is word the world. Detail is one way we do that. We enumerate, notate, name the things seen.
Eamon Grennan
Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
They continued on to London, and she's there, safe and sound, waiting for you.''You can't know for sure.' Piers swung up into the carriage.'You will never know for sure if she's dead or alive unless you keep her near you all the time,' Sebastian said with perfect, if maddening, accuracy.
Eloisa James
Three days after the liberation of Buchenwald, I became very ill; some sort of poisoning. I was transferred to a hospital and spent two weeks between life and death.One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.
Elie Wiesel
The true terror Jonah thought the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die but that we were all born that we were all once little babies like this unknowing and slowly reeling in the world gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then through no fault of our own we had to.
Dan Chaon
Prejudice begets prejudice, you see. Knowledge does not always evolve into wisdom.
Nnedi Okorafor
He was not so lucky. He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing the hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.
Gregory Maguire
When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I watched that film the other night and it embarrassed me. So dated, so coy, so evasively homosexual only a fellow homosexual might recognize the subtext.
David Leavitt
But i am a black man whose black mama's body and spirit were terrorized by another black man's hands and words. Sexism and patriarchy are not part of the revolution. I am a gender-maneuvering gay black man whose spirit was terrorized by other straight black men. Hetero-sexism and heteronormativity are not a part of our revolution. I am a black man who has ignored the plights of so many of my brothers. Separation because of difference and elitism based on class is not a part of the revolution.
Kiese Laymon
There are worst things in life than kissing boys.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Inez and I had been in the same book club for a while. She once told me that literary theory was reading without imagination, and I’ve loved her ever since.
John Dufresne
The traditional Confucian structure that invoked ideals of perfect human virtue for harmony must incorporate the rule of law for the modern era.
Patrick Mendis
I was pirouette and flourish,I was filigree and flame.How could I count my blessingswhen I didn't know their names?
Rita Dove
She knows what it's like to love someone who cannot love you back. Someone who needs you, holds you, yes, but someone who will never know that love is the knife in your heart.
John Dufresne
However she redefined herself, that part of one that made for the core of the self, that part that we think of as the ultimate, inner being—that was ineradicable Scottish. That part spoke with a Scottish voice; that part looked out through Scottish eyes; and it was that part that now welled within her as she gazed out through the window of the descending plane and saw below her the rolling Borders hills…
Alexander McCall Smith
the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignorance rational living private client bad bosom uncertain workmen mutton-tugger obedience to the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascalthat's chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said
Donald Barthelme
Mindfulness has to do with waking up and living in harmony with oneself and with the world. It is examining who we are, constantly questioning our views of the world and our place in it, while cultivating appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. It is empowering as well, because paying attention in this way opens channels to deep reservoirs of creativity, intelligence, imagination, clarity, determination, choice, and wisdom within us.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Absolutely, love matters,” she reiterated. “We forget that at our own risk.
Paul Russell
I had the vertiginous feeling one gets standing at the precipice of an unresolved plan, for I had brought Bon and myself to the brink of disaster without knowing how to save us. But was not this how all plans developed, unknown to their maker until he wove for himself a parachute, or else melted into air?
Viet Thanh Nguyen
You get exactly what you want, Anatole’s always suspected, only when you get it it’s no longer what you want, you need something else.
Paul Russell
But we don’t think too well when we want too much.
Marie Rutkoski
She realized that she had naïvely believed that the workings of the world revolved around her and her family. Never before had she acknowledged that somebody else’s life might alter hers.
David Anthony Durham
It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
Chinua Achebe
Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.
Victor Davis Hanson
Luck is what happens, when preparation meets opportunity
Randy Pausch
Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Don't panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
Junot Díaz
If I'd thought she was uninterested, I never would have worried so much - the prospect of screwing something up is much more daunting than that of screwing nothing up. I definitely thought there was something there, and so there was something to lose, you see.
Adam Levin
When 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you" - which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking.When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised.Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous.
Gary D. Schmidt
Corruption is never compulsory.
Sheldon Vanauken
I know he is--sensitive--on some points, Detective, but you must bear in mind how hard it is for an honest man to do his work in relative obscurity, while dishonest men attain wealth and renown. That is why corruption is so pernicious. It breaks the will of good men.
Jed Rubenfeld
Malone's commentary on Sonnet 93 was a defining moment in the history not only of Shakespeare studies but also of literary biography in general. What has emerged in our time as a dominant form of life writing can trace its lineage back to this extended footnote.
James Shapiro
For Dickinson as part of a middle-class community anxious about female creativity, self-assertion, self-expression, and egoism, Shakespeare and Stratford may have been emblems appropriate to her own task as a writer: to achieve literary renown but also authorial disappearance.
Paraic Finnerty
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten’?” He laughed again. “Racine has his moments, sure, but you can’t beat Shakespeare for the really grisly stuff.
Adam Roberts
We now doubt Aristotle, understand Shakespeare only with footnotes.
Ada Palmer
A southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!''The red plague rid you!''Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!''As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.''Strange stuff''Thou jesting monkey thou''Apes with foreheads villainous low''Pied ninny''Blind mole...' -The Caliban Curses
Gary D. Schmidt
I have always derived great comfort from William Shakespeare. After a depressing visit to the mirror or an unkind word from a girlfriend or an incredulous stare in the street, I say to myself: 'Well. Shakespeare looked like shit.' It works wonders.
Martin Amis
Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. 'That is where the work is. Our stomachs know that. But our hearts are usually somewhere else.
Alexander McCall Smith
In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams.
Toni Morrison
Everyone had gone to school with someone’s brother or known each other up at Cambridge. These were serious young leftist intellectuals, many of them communists devoted to the idea of a classless society, but they were also upper class and English and so almost unconsciously sought out others of their kind and mixed with them, while the working-class youth stood alone just outside the perimeter of this charmed circle, coming as close as he dared, barred from entry by an invisible boundary of accent.
David Leavitt
You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart
He wanted to toast mad idealism, forbidden desires, the dreams that drove one to criminal acts. He wanted, quite starkly, oblivion.
Paul Russell
To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero
Adam Johnson
Acts of heroism are easy—becoming a hero is a bitch.
Adam Johnson
The guard hit Kestrel across the face. “I said, what did you give him?”You had a warrior’s heart, even then.Kestrel spat blood. “Nothing,” she told the guard. She thought of her father, she thought of Arin. She told her final lie. “I gave him nothing.
Marie Rutkoski
... 'You can't read everything. I've never got beyond the beginning of Proust. I love him, but I can't seem to get beyond about page three.'They were comfortable in each other's company, and this confession seemed to accentuate the ease of their relationship. The confession itself was not entirely true; Isabel had read more Proust than that, but other people undoubtedly found it reassuring to think that one had only read a few pages. Certainly those who claimed to have read Proust in his entirety got scant sympathy from others. And yet, she suddenly wondered, should you actually lie about how much Proust you've read? Some politicians, she reminded herself, did that--or the equivalent--when they claimed to be down-to-earth, no-nonsense types, just like the voters, when all the time they were secretly delighting in Proust . . .
Alexander McCall Smith
This stream of watching made what was watched wanted.
Jane Alison
Everything that flickered could be made permanent. That was what drew him to photography, what made every painstaking step worth it: the permanence of the image. That was what fascinated him, the working against time...
Katie Roiphe
How decisive for the Christian educator, or for any educator of good will, is the revelation that man is made in the image and likeness of the three-Personed God? That is like asking what difference it will make to us if we keep in mind that a human being is made not for the processing of data, but for wisdom; not for the utilitarian satisfaction of appetite, but for love; not for the domination of nature, but for participation in it; not for the autonomy of an isolated self, but for communion.
Anthony M. Esolen
A basic flaw in contemporary American educational philosophy as much as it is under the influence of the late John Dewey, is it s failure to grasp the essentially artistic character of teaching. Due to an inflated opinion of "science" and all things supposedly "scientific," educators have been loathe to admit that teaching is an art, not a science. The art of teaching is a mingling of the liberal and the dramatic arts. Above and beyond the subject matter, the teacher actually needs but two assets: (a) a grasp of the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric,and logic; (b) a mastery of the dramatic art of presentation." — pg 126 footnote 1.
Frederick D. Wilhelmsen
We will be judged by how well we love.
Toni Morrison
Don't judge people too strongly.
Eraldo Banovac
Tracy had never been so conscious of the sky above the earth, the dangerous clouds that gathered there, the way humans lived beneath such grandeur and threat every moment of their lives.
Paul Russell
I have always loved the many moods of the sky at Rocky Flats. Turquoise and teal in summer, fiery red at sunset, iron gray when snow is on the way. The land rolls in waves of tall prairie grass bowed to the wind, or sprawling mantles of white frosted with a thin sheath of ice in winter.
Kristen Iversen
But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time.
Aimee Bender
She loved him, even though it was so hard to love anybody else after loving my dad. I think I knew this before she did.
Margaret McMullan