Quotes by Teachers - Page 15

I thought I was growing wings—it was a cocoon.I thought, now is the time to stepinto the fire—it was deep water.Eschatology is a word I learnedas a child: the study of Last Things;facing my mirror—no longer young,the news—always of death,the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoringand howling, howling....("Seeing For a Moment")
Denise Levertov
I am, a shadowthat grows longer as the sunmoves, drawn outon a thread of wonder.If I bear burdensthey begin to be rememberedas gifts, goods, a basketof bread that hurtsmy shoulders but closes mein fragrance. I caneat as I go. ("Stepping Westward")
Denise Levertov
The yellow moon dreamilytipping buttons of lightdown among the leaves. Marimba,marimba - from beyond theblack street.Somebody dancing,somebodygetting the helloutta here. Shadows of catsweave round the treetrunks,the exposed knotty roots.("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees")
Denise Levertov
The dividing line forms-fashioned from:Dragon's tearsMissed yearsOvercome fearsThe fire and ice paradoxSeen with True SightDarkness does not always equate to evilLight does not always bring good
P.C. Cast
A double-edged swordOne side destroysOne releasesI am your Gordian knotWill you release or destroy me?Follow truth and you shall:Find me on waterPurify me through fireTrapped by earth nevermoreAir will whisper to youWhat spirit already knows:That even shatteredanything is possibleIf you believeThen we shall both be free.
P.C. Cast
We are adjured not to burn the candle at both ends.But how many people have verified that physically possible?
Idries Shah
Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.
Idries Shah
People are always trying to understand.There is only one way to do that.It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand.
Idries Shah
Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.
Idries Shah
Sometimes the closer we got to a situation, the less clear it looked.
Wally Lamb
On Christmas Eve," Joe said, "when you were reading 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids' to Matty, Corrie and I were sitting on the stairs listening."Jo looked at Lilli, his face stern."The bit I always remember best in that story is the bit when the wolf goes to the miller and tells him to throw flour over his paws to disguise them." He began to quote from the story: "'The miller thought to himself, "The wolf is going to harm someone," and refused to do as he was told. Then the wolf said, "If you do not do as I tell you, I will kill you." The miller was afraid, and did as he was told, and threw the flour over the wolf's paws until they were white. This is what mankind is like.'"He repeated the final sentence."'This is what mankind is like.
Peter Rushforth
...it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it.
Jack L. Chalker
A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.
Idries Shah
The grace you had yesterday will not be sufficient for today.
Oswald Chambers
What if I don’t like adventure?Then cultivate a taste for it. Take a chance. That’s how you grow.
Wally Lamb
The words of the bards come down the centuries to us, warm with living breath.
Pádraic Pearse
Are writers the torchbearers of humanity? It’s a romantic idea, but it’s complete rubbish. We writers are the crocodiles in the river.
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
I would be happy to take credit for all of the wonderful experiences I describe in my novels, but my life isn’t quite that rich. Unfortunately we authors are sometimes forced to use other people’s lives, too.”“Sounds rather beastly,” the journalist laughed. “Or maybe writers are like vultures. Some people feel we journalists are.” He mimicked a bird of prey and grinned.
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Even the best cook can’t make chicken soup out of his own feet. There aren’t so terribly many ingredients in anyone’s life, less meat than there is on a sparrow. The average person could come up with at most two good novels. Many who think very highly of themselves can’t manage more than a couple of anecdotes.
Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Writers live twice.
Natalie Goldberg
Poverty is restriction and as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself.
Stuart Wilde
God's friendship is with people who know their poverty.
Oswald Chambers
There is more to darkness than nightfall.
David Malouf
If you open your mouth in the dark, you will speak while in the wrong mood--darkness is the time to listen.
Oswald Chambers
Displeased is too mild a word, Pauline. I would rather use the word "vexed". I would be most discomforted to know that you were "vexed" my lord, Halt said, with just the slightest trace of mockery in his tone. The Baron turned a piercing glare on him, don't take this too far, it warned him. Then we shall make it "extremely vexed", lady Pauline, he said meaningfully. I leave it to you to put it in the right form. He looked from her to Halt. You will receive the official notification of my displeasure tomorrow, Halt. I tremble in anticipation my lord, said Halt.
John Flanagan
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.
Aaron Copland
They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.
Frank McCourt
Eww," Jack said, and then giggled. "Yeah, and a Paris Hilton doll that had an optional brain."Aphrodite raised her brow at him. "Don't go all crazy. There are some things even Paris Hilton can't buy.
P.C. Cast
This is what they mean by epiphanies. I am almost thinking in exclamation points.
Claire Hennessy
It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don't? Now she was me - the familiar stranger. She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair - long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma’s had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth - more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I’d always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn’t that my skin was suddenly so white ... maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting. I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness ... as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger ... more barbaric. From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment — just an instant—I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother’s people rejoiced.
P.C. Cast
If I shot an arrow and thought about an ass, would it surprise you that I hit Erik?' Stark asked me in a pleasant, nonchalant voice.
P.C. Cast
Zo, I'm not a damn pussy!'Erik, looking very tall and full-grown, kick-your-butt vampyre-like, snorted sarcastically and then said, 'No, you're a damn human. Wait, that does make you a pussy!
P.C. Cast
We become side-tracked if we make physical health our aim and imagine that because we are children of God we shall always be perfectly well.
Oswald Chambers
The reward for attention is always healing.
Julia Cameron
The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil.
Oswald Chambers
Satan takes occasion of the frailty of the bodily temple and says, 'Now you know you cannot do that; you are so infirm, you cannot concentrate your mind,' etc. Never allow bodily infirmities to hinder you obeying the commands of Jesus.
Oswald Chambers
Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus— not love for Jesus Himself.
Oswald Chambers
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life is an achievement. To do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.
David McCullough Jr.
Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” (Wellesly High School commencement speech, “You Are Not Special”, 6-12)
Teacher David McCullough
Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.
Idries Shah
Never ask another person's advice about anything God makes you decide before Him.
Oswald Chambers
Maggie Dove wanted to be a beacon of light. She dreamed of being the sort of person who made others laugh, calmed crying babies, soothed wild dogs, inspired hopefulness.
Susan Breen
You can keep going on much less attention than you crave.
Idries Shah
When the human being says:'It is not true...'He may mean:'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'Or:'I don't like it.
Idries Shah
AttractionThe whites of his eyespull me like moons.He smiles. I believehis face. Alreadymy body slips down in the chair:I recline on my side,offering peeled grapes.I can taste his tonguein my mouthwhenever he speaks.I suspect he lies.But my body oils itself loose.When he gets up to fix a drinkmy legs like derrickshoist me off the seat.I am thirsty, it seams.Already I see the seductionfar off in the distancelike a large treedwarfed by a risein the road.I put away objectionsas quietly as quilts.Already I explain to myselfhow marriages are broken--accidentally, like arms or legs.
Enid Shomer
I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages. Rabia
Idries Shah
When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.
Oswald Chambers
Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that compound the suffering and assure their continuation.
Natalie Goldberg
The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold. 69 L
Oswald Chambers
What drew him back was something altogether more personal, to a history where, in the pain and longing of adolescence, he was still standing on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets waiting for someone that he knew would never appear. He had long understood that one of his selves, the earliest and most vulnerable, had never left this place, and this original and clearest view of things could be recovered only through what had first come to him in the glow of its ordinary light and weather...it was the light they appeared in that was the point, and that at least had not changed.
David Malouf
...let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
Oswald Chambers
To drown in treacle is just as unpleasant as to drown in mud.People today are in danger of drowning in information; but because they have been taught information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.The lightning said to the oak tree: 'Stand aside, or take what is coming to you!
Idries Shah
God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, ". . . who will go for Us?" The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude.
Oswald Chambers
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.
Golda Meir
Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it’s the one part of you the world can’t interfere with.
Frank McCourt
Neither imagine that you are false, nor lash yourself, for both may be forms of self-indulgence.
Idries Shah
When you are still fragmentated, lacking certainty — what difference does it make what your decisions are?
Idries Shah
The question of what we are can only be answered by ourselves. We each decide what we are by the life choices we make. How we were made, who are parents are, where we are from, the color of our skin, who we choose to love, all those things do not define us. Our actions define us, and will keep defining us until even after death.
P.C. Cast
What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.
David Malouf
Today I will find something beautiful.Delicate pink blossoms on a cherry tree.The dove resting near the lemon buds.Sunbeams smiling from sky to earth.Smiling on me."Creating" in BREATHE IN
Eileen Granfors