“He only knows great teachers can bore into someone else's mind like this -- only they have this kind of power. Maybe that's why teachers are paid so little: what they earn has more power than money.”

“Later it will occur to him that checking your feelings, holding them inside where they burn, is what a leader has to do. Every day.”

“It is worthwhile adding that the power of the poem to teach not only sensibilities and the subtle movements of the spirit but knowledge, real lasting felt knowledge, is going mostly unnoticed among our scholars. The body of knowledge locked into and releasable from poetry can replace practically any university in the Republic. First things first, then: the primal importance of a poem is what it can add to the individual mind.Poetry is the voice of a poet at its birth, and the voice of a people in its ultimate fulfillment as a successful and useful work of art.”

“He thinks of all he has seen and learned: that the universe is indifferent to our human endeavors, that what gives our lives meaning is the passion that invades our hearts and burns in us, and maybe even destroys us.”

“Great Light, the Enemy's power is so fragile! The devils can use only what we ourselves will give them. Do you see? Give them nothing and their power fails; it falls like a spent arrow, like a blade broken and blunted.”

“no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop your books and run like hell”

“..he never requires more than I am able to give, and what he does require of me is always appropriate to my knowledge and circumstances....My obligation is to give all I have, not all someone else has, to be as good as I can be, not as good as someone else is.”