“It is always more pleasant to meet with one who is a bookman than with one who is not.”
“The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds.”
“Love is ordinary, love is dull, love is the natural condition of the human heart, love is the message we carry branded on us from the womb but only the best of us will dare to read it and, even when we dare to read it to people who can never understand, it is still there in us like the rings in a tree or the ridges in a shell, part of us, marking the years and the drought and the growth, even if nobody sees it until the tree is cut down.”
“How much more complicated life is than the attainment of a Ph.D. would lead one to believe!”
“Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.”
“Myself: But wasn't the decision a right one? Am I not here? What more could Feeling have achieved than was brought about by Reason?”
“I liked the company of most of my colleagues, who were about equally divided among good men who were good teachers, awful men who were awful teachers, and the grotesques and misfits who drift into teaching and are so often the most educative influences a boy meets in school. If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher.”