Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.
BEL KAUFMANI 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.
More Bel Kaufman Quotes
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Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.
BEL KAUFMAN -
I like the word OLD. Not senior, that’s for proms. Older? Older than whom? ‘Old’ is honorable and ripe
BEL KAUFMAN -
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 -
One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have “windows with trees in them.
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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.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.
BEL KAUFMAN -
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Education can’t make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.
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.
BEL KAUFMAN -
To the young, cliches seem freshly minted.
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Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.
BEL KAUFMAN -
Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.
BEL KAUFMAN -
… good teachers, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are alike everywhere.
BEL KAUFMAN -
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 -
“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.
BEL KAUFMAN