“I so enjoy being old because for the first time I don’t have to do anything-work, teach, study. I feel very good about myself-and at my age I can say no to anything now if I don’t want to do it. What a liberating word.”

Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.

Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.

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.

People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.

Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.

A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.

Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.

One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.

I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe

Teachers try to make us feel lower than themselves, maybe because this is because they feel lower than outside people. One teacher told me to get out of the room and never come back, which I did.

My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.

You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn’t have religion

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Whenever you begin any good work you should first of all make a most pressing appeal to Christ our Lord to bring it to perfection.

That’s how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel like composing something to it, then I do that.

Whom the mad would destroy, first they make gods.

Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.

Start with local press first. Start with people you know. Don’t pitch every journalist.

A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.