Quotes from Bel Kaufman

Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money-in that order; it is a process, a never-ending one.

... good teachers, like Tolstoy's happy families, are alike everywhere.

I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

Education can't make us all leaders, but it can teach us which leader to follow.

Learning is a process of mutual discovery for teacher and pupil. Keep an open mind to their unexpected responses.

And that's it; that's why I want to teach; that's the one and only compensation: to make a permanent difference in the life of a child.

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.

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.

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion.

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.

You're not God. Nothing is your fault, except, perhaps, poor teaching.

There is a need for closeness, yet we can't get too close. The teacher-pupil relationship is a kind of tightrope to be walked. I know how carefully I must choose a word, a gesture. I understand the delicate balance between friendliness and familiarity, dignity and aloofness.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the eighteenth-century letter writer and biographer wrote: "Civility costs nothing and buys everything.

Recently at a party I saw a man rise from his seat each time a woman entered the room. I smiled my encouragement: "You were well brought up," I said. "No," he replied, "I learned by myself.

Appreciation is appreciated.

The Bible says, "A soft answer turneth away wrath.

hopeless optimism.

P.S. I wish I could believe you.)

St. Peter:  ââ'¬Å"Who is knocking at my gate?" Voice: "It is I." St. Peter: "Go away, we don't need any more school teachers here!

The books we are required to teach frequently have nothing to do with anything except the fact that they have always been taught, or that there is an oversupply of them, or that some committee or other was asked to come up with some titles.

Mr. Philpotts, did you enjoy your life?" "Why, no, I wouldn't say—" "How then," asked the chief, "do you expect to enjoy your afterlife? What do you know of happiness? What experience have you had in that line?

That I was a writer was further proof of God's far-sightedness; she was convinced that by some magic of propinquity she would acquire a mastery of the English language.

Your fingers smell of incense—a lover sings to the corpse of his dead sweetheart.

Do not weep, do not weep, my little wife: song of hope and encouragement in marriage.