I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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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“Let it be a challenge to you” means you’re stuck with it; “interpersonal relationships” is a fight between kids; “ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline” means call the cops.
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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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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.
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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.
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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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When giving comes directly from the heart, it can never disappoint or embarrass.
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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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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.
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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
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Never mind the cream; it will always rise to the top. It’s the skim milk that needs good teachers.
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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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Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
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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