Quotes by Teachers - Page 11

Teaching is bringing the news.
Frank McCourt
Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.
Frank McCourt
Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland's sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.
Frank McCourt
There's something hostile about the way they enter and leave the room that tells you what they think of you. It could be your imagination and you try to figure out what will bring them over to your side. You try lessons that worked with other classes but even that doesn't help and it's because of that chemistry. They know when they have you on the run. They have instincts that detect your frustrations.
Frank McCourt
The main reason I became a teacher is that I like being the first one to introduce kids to words and music and people and numbers and concepts and idea that they have never heard about or thought about before. I like being the first one to tell them about Long John Silver and negative numbers and Beethoven and alliteration and "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" and similes and right angles and Ebenezer Scrooge. . . Just think about what you know today. You read. You write. You work with numbers. You solve problems. We take all these things for granted. But of course you haven't always read. You haven't always known how to write. You weren't born knowing how to subtract 199 from 600. Someone showed you. There was a moment when you moved from not knowing to knowing, from not understanding to understanding. That's why I became a teacher.
Phillip Done
Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That’s what life’s all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.
Wally Lamb
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
Idries Shah
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
Idries Shah
Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.
Idries Shah
That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).
Idries Shah
That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.
Wally Lamb
All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.
Idries Shah
Form is useful, but it is secondary.
Idries Shah
Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head, and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint, but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for the next.
Robert Henri
Civic participants don't aim to make life better merely for members of the group. They want to improve even the lives of people who never participate...
Clay Shirky
the prospect of beginning a third- act career scared me almost as much as it attracted me.
Tony Danza
The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.
Frank McCourt
A Sufi has a right to be served, but he has no right to demand. Maruf Karkhi of Khorasan
Idries Shah
Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion.
Oswald Chambers
It is one thing to follow God's way of service if you are regarded as a hero, but quite another thing if the road marked out for you by God requires becoming a 'doormat' under other people's feet.
Oswald Chambers
Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket--to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served? Are you willing to give and be poured out until you are used up and exhausted--not seeking to be ministered to, but to minister?
Oswald Chambers
Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude because they feel such service is beneath their dignity.
Oswald Chambers
No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left--I am here for God to send me where He will.
Oswald Chambers
The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one.
Idries Shah
Whoever is to be wise despises himself. Only the ignorant trust their own judgement.
Idries Shah
Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it.
Idries Shah
We don't want to eliminate the ego completely. Otherwise we'd be wandering around the house each morning, drinking coffee for hours, saying, 'Who the hell am I?' We need the ego to sustain a sense of identity.
Stuart Wilde
Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.
Julia Cameron
If you will not reprove yourself,’ Saadi says, ‘you will not welcome reproof from another.
Idries Shah
A career must be husbanded. Care must be taken. Everyday must bring some small bit of progress. How would an artist with any self-worth act? Act that way.
Julia Cameron
The path to enlightenment is really very simple - all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realisations will naturally follow from this.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
The forms of the central and surrounding deities... should not be protruding like a clay statue or cast image, yet neither should they be flat like a painting. In contrast, they should be apparent, yet not truly existent, like a rainbow in the sky or the reflection of the moon in a lake. They should appear as though conjured up by a magician. Clear appearance involves fixing the mind one-pointedly on these forms with a sense of vividness, nakedness, lucidity, and clarity.
Jigme Lingpa
People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one. When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess.
Ajahn Chah
[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.
Steve Hagen
The life-tree of practice is single-minded application.
Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye
The buddha-dharma … is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes … , not according to some … program of dos and don'ts.
Steve Hagen
[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.
Steve Hagen
The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion.
Steve Hagen
As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.
Steve Hagen
The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.
Steve Hagen
What makes human life--which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.
Steve Hagen
Buddha once saw a jackal, a wild dog, run out of the forest where he was staying. It stood still for a while, then it ran into the underbrush, and then out again. Then it ran into a tree hollow, then out again. Then it went into a cave, only to run out again. One minute it stood, the next it ran, then it lay down, then it jumped up. The jackal had the mange. When it stood, the mange would eat into its skin, so it would run. Running, it was still uncomfortable, so it would stop. Standing, it was still uncomfortable, so it would lie down. Then it would jump up again, running to the underbrush, the tree hollow, never staying still. The Buddha said, “Monks, did you see that jackal this afternoon? Standing, it suffered. Running, it suffered. Sitting, it suffered. Lying down, it suffered. It blamed standing for its discomfort. It blamed sitting. It blamed running and lying down. It blamed the tree, the underbrush, and the cave. In fact, the problem was with none of those things. The problem was with his mange.” We are just the same as that jackal. Our discontent is due to wrong view. Because we don’t exercise sense restraint, we blame our suffering on externals. Whether we live in Thailand, America or England, we aren’t satisfied. Why not? Because we still have wrong view. Just that! So wherever we go, we aren’t content. But just as that jackal would be content wherever it went as soon as its mange was cured, so would we be content wherever we went once we rid ourselves of wrong view.
Ajahn Chah
This will never come again
Steve Hagen
We all smiled because it was the truth: Living did take a lot more guts than giving up.
Brendan Halpin
With tybo men there isn't much difference between fucking and killing.
Tom Spanbauer
So, even in the midst of craziness and exhaustion and a life-changing chaos,I was filled with peace and the sweet knowledge that I was walking the path my Goddess wanted me on.
P.C. Cast
You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual. God wants you to be entirely his, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit. It takes a tremendous amount of time. Some of us expect to “clear the numberless ascensions”* in about two minutes.
Oswald Chambers
Trying to force something is the best way to stop it happening.
Idries Shah
As a child of the Goddess, I know that when a being dies, the soul lives on. That dying is only a way of forgetting pain and suffering--that it is a pathway to travel back to the Goddess to be renewed and made strong-- to rest and to one day be ready to return to this realm, for it is spoken by the High Priestess...
P.C. Cast
They were our enemies. Yet in those young men of Italy I'd seen something centuries old. An American is only as old as his years. A long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those Italians. And then and there I decided to learn something of the modern world. There was something abroad which we Americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. But unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't American, and that not everything American is good, we'll all perish together, and in this twentieth century....
John Horne Burns
Yet I had become very attached to George Roc. I liked him, not for the joy of playing with him, not for some talent that made him stand out from the rest, not even for his kindness: above all, I liked him because he was always sad and because the things he told me caused me a degree of pain.....George Roc was the first being that I'd met who saw and felt himself unhappy.
Joseph Zobel
Happiness isn't something she spends much time thinking about. Survival, discomfort, hunger...these are the concerns that fill her days.
David Maine
Darius held Stark back from launching himself at Neferet, and Duantia spoke quickly into the rising tension. 'Neferet, I think we can all agree that there are many unanswered questions about the tragedy that occured on our island today. Stark, we also understand the passion and rage you feel at the loss of your Priestess. it is a hard blow for a Warrior to-'Duantia's wisdom was cut off by the sound of Aretha Franklin belting out the chorus from "Respect," which was coming from the little Coach purse Aphrodite had slung over her shoulder.Oopsie, um, sorry 'bout that.' Aphrodite frantically unzipped her purse and dug for her iPhone.
P.C. Cast
I'm here because she's here, and she belongs to me. ~Rephaim
P.C. Cast
I am not a bat. ~Rephaim
P.C. Cast
It is not 'Have I got a chance?' It is more often: 'Have I seen my chance?
Idries Shah
Not romantic," she disagreed. "To me it would be romantic if Antony properly fell on his sword and kicked the bucket and Cleopatra escaped and lived a lovely life sailing along the Nile without him and his big ideas ruining her kingdom.
Jack Gantos
As the old Ranger adage went "If a person doesn't expect to see someone, odds are he won't.
John Flanagan
Keep practicing," he told her."Until I get it right?" she said. But he corrected her."No. Until you don't get it wrong.
John Flanagan
When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
Idries Shah