Quotes from Gilbert Highet

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promise of those?

Poetry is halfway between prose and music: it is sometimes like an intimate conversation, in words and phrases which need not be fully uttered, and sometimes like dancing and wordless music.

Most Americans do not like poetry. We may respect it, but we do not enjoy it.

Bad teaching wastes a great deal of effort, and spoils many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness.

A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health.

Like all great teachers he knew that a picture is worth a thousand words and that people learn most quickly by doing something or seeing something done.

The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.

The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.

I believe that much of the maladjustment in our societies is caused, not by malevolence and corruption, but simply by ignorance.

Wherever there are beginners and experts, old and young, there is some kind of learning going on, some kind of teaching. We are all pupils and we are all teachers.

A good teacher is a determined person.

He meant that when people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, master and pupils, jailer and prisoners. They become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence.

Know the subject; love the subject; like your students; know your students.

If you do not actually like boys and girls, or young men and young women, give up teaching.

A teacher must believe in the value and interest of his subject as a doctor believes in health.

A good teacher is a determined person.

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.

What is politics but persuading the public to vote for this and support that and endure these for the promise of those

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice... and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.

Books are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves!

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on shelves...far distant in time...speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart.

Vergil preferred to give a few touches, and to allow the imagination of his readers to fill out the picture: that is one reason for his almost universal appeal. He changes each of his readers into a poet or an artist.

The real duty of man is not to extend his power or multiply his wealth beyond his needs, but to enrich and enjoy his imperishable possession: his soul.