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 KAUFMANLaughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
BEL KAUFMAN -
“Language Arts Dept.” is the English office; “literature based on child’s reading level and experiential background” means that’s all they’ve got in the Book Room; “non-academic-minded” is a delinquent; and “It has come to my attention” means you’re in trouble.
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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.
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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.
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I suggest just Good and Bad at the end of the term on report cards. Or maybe nothing. Frank Allen
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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months’ summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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.
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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.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
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The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
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I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN