Quotes by Professors - Page 25

Life was like that- there would always be something scratching at the door. And whatever was scratching would just scratch and scratch until you opened the door.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I got up to go back to the kitchen and put the cake in the oven. Probably it would not go well for the cake, or for whoever tried to eat the cake. It did not look as though the cake was going to turn out particularly nice, having been made for confusing reasons and lacking certain essential ingredients. But what else was there to do? Wasn't a terrible cake better than some terrible cake batter?
Alexandra Kleeman
No matter where you live, live with dignity.
Eraldo Banovac
It is not 2006 all over the world. So who are you in a place where 1950 or 1920 is about to arrive?
Frances Mayes
In conversion, God interferes with out lives. We relinquish autonomy. If we find the gospel message to be true, we need to surrender to God and change our lives. For that reason - whether or not the trilemma or some form of it works - many will still never assent that Jesus is God.
Gregory S. Cootsona
Tech isn’t morally good or bad until it’s wielded by the corporations that fashion it for mass consumption. Apps and platforms can be designed to promote rich social connections; or, like cigarettes, they can be designed to addict. Today, unfortunately, many tech developments do promote addiction.
Adam Alter
First memory: a man at the back door is saying, I have real bad news, sweat is dripping off his face, Garbert's been shot, noise from my mother, I run to her room behind her, I'm jumping on the canopied bed while she cries, she's pulling out drawers looking for a handkerchief, Now, he's all right, the man say, they think, patting her shoulder, I'm jumping higher, I'm not allowed, they think he saved old man Mayes, the bed slats dislodge and the mattress collapses. My mother lunges for me.Many traveled to Reidsville for the event, but my family did not witness Willis Barnes's electrocution, From kindergarten through high school, Donette, the murderer's daughter, was in my class. We played together at recess. Sometimes she'd spit on me.
Frances Mayes
Inevitably they find their way into the forest. It is there that they lose and find themselves. It is there that they gain a sense of what is to be done. The forest is always large, immense, great and mysterious. No one ever gains power over the forest, but the forest posses the power to change lives and alter destinies.
Jack D. Zipes
The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.
Chinua Achebe
Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have we learned that the Soviets were in fact developing a moon rocket, known as the N1, in the sixties. All four launch attempts of the N1 ended in explosions. Saturn was the largest rocket in the world, the most complex and powerful ever to fly, and remains so to this day. The fact that it was developed for a peaceful purpose is an exception to every pattern of history, and this is one of the legacies of Apollo.
Margaret Lazarus Dean
She's thirty-four years old. In fifty, sixty years, she'll be dead, and everything reminds her of this fact but him. With Arnie, she imagines she might live forever.
David James Poissant
Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. to philosophy textbooks and Norton literature anthologies, on the top shelves where they looked good but stayed out of reach since there's no reason for opening them ever again. Then we went by genre: mysteries, cozies, modernists, mountains, sci-fi, beloved childhood volumes, books we bought abroad, books required in school we couldn't sell back, books bought for us we'll read soon, books bought for us we have no intention of reading, books we want to read but are too long for a commitment with our current schedules...We're not really done with this organization, and I doubt we ever will be, but that's one great part about it.
Joshua Isard
A good man shares his knowledge selflessly with everyone.
Eraldo Banovac
We should enjoy every minute we live today because who knows if we will have a chance to do so tomorrow.
Eraldo Banovac
They were good parents. The worst thing they ever did to us was die.
David Leavitt
But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
...God is already out there in the world ahead of us. In our teaching, therefore, we must do more than merely help people learn how to be good church members. We are directors preparing people for roles in a drama that encompasses every part of their lives.
Richard Robert Osmer
In the realm of love and sex, it’s girls who are in the position of working hard to adapt themselves to the needs and fantasies of the mercurial males whose approval and attention they seek.
Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Too many women are afraid to be labeled feminists, afraid to stand up and say, “Yes, I am a feminist,” for fear of what that label means, for fear of how to live up to it, for fear of feminism as something essential, for fear of the punishments—both obvious and indirect—that come with openly owning feminism or doing feminism wrong.
Roxane Gay
God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so.
Toni Morrison
When Thoreau considered "where I live and what I live for," he tied together location and values. Where we live doesn't just change how we live; it informs who we become. Most recently, technology promises us lives on the screen. What values, Thoreau would ask, follow from this new location? Immersed in simulation, where do we live, and what do we live for?
Sherry Turkle
The trouble with entering the upper echelon is you have to work harder to stay there.
John Jay Osborn Jr.
Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
Toni Morrison
Toronto has no social classes - only the Masseys and the masses.
B. K. Sandwell
Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
In love, no question is ever preposterous.
André Brink
The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers.
John Gardner
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
Scott Elledge
Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams—it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain.
Alexander McCall Smith
The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.
Alexander McCall Smith
Boys, men," she said. "They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.
Alexander McCall Smith
Here’s the conundrum: We want to tell our stories! But if condensation is the language of wishes—especially the most verboten and destructive ones—the more you spell the story out, the less aesthetically charged it becomes. The question is whether untransformed experience can ever be aesthetically powerful, or whether it’s simply interesting. Literary language is one solution, with its habits of duality—metaphor, irony—and other techniques for saying opposing things at once. For haunting the reader with ghosts of buried meanings.Your story may be interesting, but what if, paradoxically, it’s what you can’t say that makes it lasting?
Laura Kipnis
I urge not that we assume that love will provide a reliable foundation for knowledge but that we nonetheless keep the requirements of love of neighbor foremost in our interpretations of Scripture. We should consider, for example, love to be a necessary criterion (a minimum) when defending an interpretation of Scripture even if it cannot be a sufficient criterion that will guarantee ethical interpretation.
Dale B. Martin
People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought.
Richard Mitchell
Man is mortal. This is his fate. Man pretends not to be mortal. That is his sin. Man is a creature of time and place, whose perspectives and insights are invariably conditioned by his immediate circumstances.
Sylvan Barnet
Earlier in this century someone claimed that we work at our play and play at our work. Today the confusion has deepened: we worship our work, work at our play, and play in our worship.
Leland Ryken
But just remember: a woman's like a rose; if you treat her right, she'll bloom, if you don't, she'll wilt.
Eric Wilson
Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It’s too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician’s craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers—something red, something anomalous, something desirable—in the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it.
Clancy Martin
Refusing dominance over others by using money is a clear sign of wisdom.
Eraldo Banovac
Is there any difference between a happy and a lucky man? A happy is someone who finds an oasis with drinking water in a desert. A lucky man will always find water.
Eraldo Banovac
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
Toni Morrison
The verse is supposed to get you hard so the chorus can suck you off.
M. Thomas Gammarino
It is not my place to offer pep talks, aphorisms, or dictums. But if I had to give one piece of practical advice it would be this: Find something that you love that they're fucking with and then fight for it. If everyone did that--imagine the difference. (50)
David Gessner
Observing is the basis of wisdom.
Eraldo Banovac
I cannot offer wine without the poison of the alcohol within.
Ada Palmer
There is nothing particularly special about that location of the centre of mass. If you were to find yourself at the precise spot that is the centre of mass of the earth-moon system, the only thing unusual that you would notice is that there would be one thousand miles of rock on top of your head.Pluto is only about twice the size of Charon, so if you put Pluto and Charon on the cosmic seesaw you would find that the balance point is a little bit outside Pluto, rather than inside it. Again, there is nothing particularly special going on there. If you were to find yourself at that precise spot, you would only notice that you were very, very cold and could no longer breathe.
Mike Brown
A clear mission statement describes the values and priorities of an organization. Developing a mission statement compels strategists to think about the nature and scope of present operations and to assess the potential attractiveness of future markets and activities. A mission statement broadly charts the future direction of an organization. A mission statement is a constant reminder to its employees of why the organization exists and what the founders envisioned when they put their fame and fortune at risk to breathe life into their dreams.
Fred R. David
The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Knowledge means rising above immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; the object is a ‘fact’ which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it.
Edward Said
The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves.
Robert Jensen
When you're fifty you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
Joyce Carol Oates
Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it’s not going to get you respect.
Gina Barreca
In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous.
Toni Morrison
...Perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so differently, because you realized that they were not trying to make life hard for you by being what they were, but were simply doing their best. Then, when you started to love them, love would do the work that it always did and it would begin to transform them and then they would end up seeing things in the same way that you did.
Alexander McCall Smith
This is my favorite part of the day. “Good morning, Class Two C,” I say. The entire class leaps up and sings out, “Good morning, miss!” Twenty-three faces are smiling at me. Sometimes they shout it with so much conviction that I laugh.
Jamie Zeppa
That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.
Alexander McCall Smith
The odd was the ordinary at Alistair Grim's. The people who lived there were odd. The things they did there were odd. Even the there itself there was odd.
Gregory Funaro
I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bare to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now there's nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people won't see any reason not to do you harm.
Martin Amis
I wasn't put on this earth to be housekeeper to my own child or to anyone else for that matter.
Lynn Freed
Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.
Jon Kabat-Zinn