Bel Kaufman Quotes
-
But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.
-
The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today?
-
To meet this expense, he sold his violin. Besides, Charlotte did not care for music.
-
She hesitated, searching in her scant vocabulary of taken for granted health the precise word to convey the inchoate distress, the alien sense of something gone wrong.
-
You’re not God. Nothing is your fault, except, perhaps, poor teaching.
-
Like a child, too, he was warm, unaffected, and selfish. He had the combination, irresistible to women, of ruthlessness and tenderness.
-
I have this colored friend Betty well, I never thought about it one way or the other until one day I went over her house for the first time and her father opened the door and I was surprized to see he was colored. Because, to me I was so used to her she always looked normal.
-
I like the word OLD. Not senior, that's for proms. Older? Older than whom? 'Old' is honorable and ripe...
-
A man couldn’t jump higher than himself, she pointed out to me. And he couldn’t help it if he was a “zoodnik”; one so annoying, he made you itch.
-
Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
-
I am writing this during my free . . . oops! un-assigned period, at the end of my first day of teaching. So far, I have taught nothing — but I have learned a great deal. To wit: We have to punch a time clock and abide by the Rules. We must make sure our students likewise abide, and that they sign the time sheet whenever they leave or reenter a room. We have keys but no locks (except in lavatories), blackboards but no chalk, students but no seats, teachers but no time to teach. The library is closed to the students.
-
That night they stayed up until eleven-thirty, an unusually late hour for them, going over some of the practical aspects of the divorce. When they discovered they were hungry, they continued in the kitchen, over an unaccustomed snack.
-
TO: ALL TEACHERS FROM: JAMES J. MCHABE, ADM. ASST. PLEASE PLOT AND HAND IN THE MEDIAN PERCENTILE CURVE BASED ON THE MIDTERM MARKS IN EACH OF YOUR CLASSES. IF A CLASS CURVE FALLS BELOW THE PERCENTILE OF FAILURES ALLOTTED TO IT, THE EFFICACY OF THE TEACHER MUST BE QUESTIONED. TEACHERS WITH THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF PASSING STUDENTS ARE TO BE COMMENDED.
-
But I am busiest outside of my teaching classes. Do you know any other business or profession where highly-skilled specialists are required to tally numbers, alphabetize cards, put notices into mailboxes, and patrol the lunchroom?
-
Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It's the skim milk that needs good teachers.
-
The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have always been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them, or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.
-
Is Rrawssian saying: ‘Better small fish than big cockroach.’ Some hawsband drrunk, some hawsband play all time cards, some hawsband fleert with woman. . . . Rrogov make only with brread.
-
And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.