Quotes by Professors - Page 29

Don't fret, boy. I'm not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they're from, have been trying to understand this world of ours.
Nahoko Uehashi
I resented the idea of being talented. I couldn’t respect it — in my experience, no one else did. Being called talented at school had only made me a target for resentment. I wanted to work. Work, I could honor.
Alexander Chee
When your elders are millennia-old demigods, you’d best take the injunction to respect your elders seriously.
Nalo Hopkinson
Don't just do what is required, do what is respected then, at you'll know, you did the right thing even if it works out wrong.
michael p naughton
Don’t just do what is required, do what is respected.
michael p naughton
Respect flows two ways and can mean as much to the giver as to the one receiving.
David Anthony Durham
Jude had witnessed all of this with the dejected respect one had for people with destructive talents, like winning hamburger-eating contests.
Eleanor Henderson
Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it’s not going to get you respect.
Gina Barreca
What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.
Terryl L. Givens
There's a great difficulty in makingchoices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desireable choices, no one choiceseems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any *one* of the others it would not be found inferior. All equally attractive but none finally inviting.
John Barth
Like the swimming rats in Richter’s experiment, we can survive for only so long without solid ground beneath our feet; if the choices aren’t real, sooner or later we will go under. It’s important, therefore, that we examine our assumptions about choice and that we openly discuss how, when and why it falls short.
Sheena Iyengar
At its best, choice is a means by which we can resist the people and the systems that seek to exert control over us. But choice itself can become oppressive when we insist that it is equally available to all. It can become an excuse for ignoring inequities that stem from gender or class or ethnic differences, for example, because one can blithely say, “oh, but they had a choice! We all have choices.
Sheena Iyengar
When the options are few, we can be happy with what we choose since we are confident that it is the best possible choice for us. When the options are practically infinite, though, we believe that the perfect choice for us must be out there somewhere and that it’s our responsibility to find it. Choosing can become a lose-lose situation: if we make a choice quickly without fully exploring the available options, we’ll regret potentially missing out on something better; if we do exhaustively consider all the options, we’ll expend more effort (which won’t necessarily increase the quality of our final choice), and if we discover other good options, we may regret that we can’t choose them all.
Sheena Iyengar
We don't get to choose what truths God reveals to us -- but we do get to choose what we do with the truths -- whom we share it with and how.
Carol Goodman
Perhaps, thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex, and her own color, and to hell with her parents.
Gregory Maguire
Each one a little bit different but following some blueprint somewhere. As if each of us might have a blueprint. As if somewhere there's the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern.
David Vann
It was different to give something up than to see it taken away. The difference, Kestrel said, was choice.
Marie Rutkoski
Democracies should be a delirium of choices - more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.
B.W. Powe
In a Fisherian world, animals are slaves to evolutionary fashion, evolving extravagant and arbitrary displays and tastes that are all "meaningless"; they do not involve anything other than perceived qualities.
Richard O. Prum
We chose younger and younger politicians to lead us because they looked good on television and were sharp. But really we should be looking for wisdom, and choosing people who had acquired it; and such people, in general, looked bad on television - gray, lined, thoughtful.
Alexander McCall Smith
My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being. It pricked up its ears at the banter of eighteen-year-olds on the street. It frankly examined their bodies. It did not know its place: that my youth governed me with such ease didn't mean I was young. It meant I was divided as if housing a stowaway soul, rife with itches and yens which demanded a stern vigilance. I didn't live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore. My body had not, in its flesh, fundamentally changed quite so much as it now could intuit the change that would only be dodged by an untimely death, and to know both those bodies at once, the youthful, and the old, was to me the quintessence of being middle-aged. Now I saw all my selves, even those that did not yet exist, and the task was remembering which I presented to others.
Susan Choi
Stoner and Masters smiled at each other, and they spoke no more of the question that evening. But for years afterward, at odd moments, Stoner remembered what Masters had said; and though it brought him no vision of the University to which he had committed himself, it did reveal to him something about his relationship to the two men, and it gave him a glimpse of the corrosive and unspoiled bitterness of youth.
John Williams
Ripe for romance? Is that not only the self-conscious and sensitive young man's way of saying he was heavy with passion? Is not, perhaps, romance only the fiction by means of which the tender-minded negotiate their lust?
Trevanian
It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.
Trevanian
Sometimes, there aren't any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard... It's funny, but when you think about it, we're all broken. That's what life does. It knocks you down and breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don't. You either do things on your terms, or you don't. You let the bad things win, or you don't.""You either let it break you, or you don't.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
They call each other `E.’ Elvis pickswildflowers near the river and bringsthem to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him.In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sportsLevis and western blouses with rhinestones.Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousersand T-shirts, a letterman’s jacket from Tupelo High.They take long walks and often hold hands.She prefers they remain just friends. Forever.Emily’s poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs,Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and RichardNixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile.Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoonhe will play guitar and sing “I Taste A LiquorNever Brewed” to the tune of “Love Me Tender.”Emily will clap and harmonize. Alonein their cabins later, they’ll listen to the riverand nap. They will not think of Amherstor Las Vegas. They know why God made themroommates. It’s because Americawas their hometown. It’s becauseGod is a thing withoutfeathers. It’s becauseGod wears blue suede shoes.
Hans Ostrom
C.S. Lewis in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.
Sheldon Vanauken
There is honey in this land sweeter than any I know of, and I have cut cane in places where the dirt itself tasted like sugar, so that's saying a heap.
Toni Morrison
Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.
Toni Morrison
she seemed happy, though perhaps a bit desperately so
John Williams
I'm going to find a way to be happy, and I'd really love to be happy with you, but if I can't be happy with you, then I'll find a way to be happy without you.
Randy Pausch
She was truly happy for the first time in her life, and it felt just like living in a small room painted all white, with windows looking out onto impenetrable forest.
Alexandra Kleeman
Appreciation involves being alert to the positive aspects of the current situation and feeling thankful for what one has and for one's circumstances. This requires not only a positive perspective in the present but also conscious awareness of features in the surround. The latter, in fact, is something that may be surprisingly rare. Especially when we are engaging in routine activities, we often do so mindlessly (Langer, 1997) or as though we were on automatic pilot (Cialdini, 1993). If we learn to bring our attention to the current state, we can choose to focus on positive aspects of the situation and to remind ourselves of the potential sources of good feelings that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
Sandra L. Schneider
Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
This is it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart.
Scott Russell Sanders
Every time you find your attention captured by a poster, your awareness, and perhaps something more, has, if only for a moment, been appropriated without your consent.
Tim Wu
At Bramasole, the first secret spot that draws me outside is a stump and board bench on a high terrace overlooking the lake and valley. Before I sit down, I must bang the board against a tree to knock off all the ants. Then I'm happy. With a stunted oak tree for shelter and a never-ending view, I am hidden. No one knows where I am. The nine-year-old's thrill of the hideout under the hydrangea comes back: My mother is calling me and I am not answering.
Frances Mayes
Everyone has a right to love the land that gave them the things they need to live. It gives them beauty to look at, and food to eat, and neighbors to bicker with and then eventually to marry. But I think... that your own devotion to your familiar homeland should inspire you to allow other people to embrace their homelands as beautiful too.
Gregory Maguire
Only where there is life can there be home.
Joyce Carol Oates
...maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don't believe it and don't count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous.
Toni Morrison
Every step of the road was just as she'd dreamt it all the time she'd been away. Every step took her further away from the smoke and the noise and the loneliness and fear of the city she'd left behind. Every step drew her deeper into the hollows of the landscape, the green hills and shining rivers and mist-tangled treetops.
Jon McGregor
I didn't grow up in a Norman Rockwell house... my house was more akin to Norman Lear.
michael p naughton
From the windows, through the fur of snow, the landscape became more melancholy when the sun successfully brightened the quiet trees, unable to speak without their leaves.
Toni Morrison
I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map.
Alexander McCall Smith
Home isn't a place, Cassie.' The memory crept up on me. 'Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
A traditional house smelled of wood smoke, the earth, and of thatch; all good smells, the smell of life itself.
Alexander McCall Smith
But can't you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home? I don't mean heaven. I mean a real earthly home. Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or out. A real home. Not some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get. Not some place you claimed, snatched because you got the guns. Not some place you stole from the people living there, but your own home, where if you go back past your great-great-grandparents, past theirs, and theirs, past the whole of Western history, past the beginning of organized knowledge, past pyramids and poison bows, on back to when rain was new, before plants forgot they could sing and birds thought they were fish, back when God said Good! Good!-- there, right there where you know your own people were born and lived and died. Imagine that, Pat. That place. Who was God talking to if not to my people living in my home?""You preaching, Reverend.""No, I'm talking to you, Pat. I'm talking to you.
Toni Morrison
He is more rooted to the idea of home. He created this home...and established routines like watching the BBC and cooking barbecues for friends. It's much harder to dismantle that world and to rebuild it somewhere else.
Azar Nafisi
It had to be U. U. was the only town I could still bear, the one spot in the atlas I'd already absorbed head-on. When you take too many of your critical hits in one place, that place can no longer hurt you.
Richard Powers
....and I'll know that this is what you live for - to hear someone say. "Let's go home," to hear someone you love call your name.
Leah Stewart
Home is not where you have to go but where you want to go; nor is it a place where you are sullenly admitted, but rather where you are welcomed – by the people, the walls, the tiles on the floor, the followers beside the door, the play of life, the very grass.
Scott Russell Sanders
In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist.
Ari Berk
. . . distant as the death of grocery chickens.
Rodney Jones
The widespread willingness to rely on thermonuclear bombs as the ultimate weapon displays a cavalier attitude toward death that has always puzzled me. My impression is that...most of the defenders of these weapons are not suitably horrified at the possibility of a war in which hundreds of millions of people would be killed...I suspect that an important factor may be belief in an afterlife, and that the proporttion of those who think that death is not the end is much higher among the partisans of the bomb than among its opponents.
Thomas Nagel
The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
Chinua Achebe
For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us - excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over.
Norman Maclean
And he recalled the ancient adage: Who must do the harsh things? He who can.
Trevanian
Each second melts like ice.Each second cloats like blood.
Dr. Prathap Kamath from Ekalavya
When life gets rough,don't panic! Just let it be! Life is leading you to still waters!
Dr. Vivencio Ballano