… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
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.
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The heart has its reasons; it’s the mind that’s suspect.
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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
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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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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’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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Children are the true connoisseurs. What’s precious to them has no price, only value.
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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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One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.
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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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“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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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.
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People ate bread made of the shells of peas because there was no flour.
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