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 KAUFMANThe clerical work is par for the course. “Keep on file in numerical order” means throw in wastebasket. You’ll soon learn the language.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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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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I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
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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 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 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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“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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Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
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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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The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn’t it a magnificent day today?
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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.
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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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Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy.
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Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN