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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.

Bel Kaufman

I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
BEL KAUFMAN

Bad End Good Suggest
I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.
BEL KAUFMAN

Long Teaching Writing
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Children Differences Want
I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.
BEL KAUFMAN

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

Mind Needs Teacher
I am writing this during my lunch period, because I need to reach towards the outside world of sanity, because I am overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the clerical work still to be done, and because at this hour of the morning normal ladies are still sleeping.
BEL KAUFMAN

Morning Sleep Writing
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

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

Dream School Tree
The clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
BEL KAUFMAN

Art Children Reading
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
BEL KAUFMAN

Knowledge Leader School
Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
BEL KAUFMAN

Expression Love Self
To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
BEL KAUFMAN

Cliche Language Young
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Different Inspiring Long
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.
BEL KAUFMAN

Building Good Moning Notion
You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
BEL KAUFMAN

Angry Envious Laughing Sad
A teacher is frequently the only adult in the pupil’s environment who treats him with respect.
BEL KAUFMAN

Adult Environment Teacher

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bel Kaufman Quotes