Gilbert Highet Quotes

Many people have played themselves to death. Many people have eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody ever thought himself to death.

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

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.

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 very wise old teacher once said: I consider a day's teaching wasted if we do not all have one hearty laugh.

The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning.

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

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

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

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.

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

Many of the twisted minds and crippled characters in the world were made by careless parents who kept their children away from knives and fires, but put permanent scars on their souls.

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.

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.

The mind never need stop growing. Indeed, one of the few experiences which never pall is the experience of watching one's own mind and how it produces new interests, responds to new stimuli, and develops new thoughts, apparently without effort and almost independently of one's own conscious control.

A good teacher is a determined person

The wise teacher knows that 55 minutes of work plus 5 minutes laughter are worth twice as much as 60 minutes of unvaried work.

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

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out.

The aim of those who try to control thought is always the same. They find one single explanation of the world, one system of thought and action that will (they believe) cover everything; and then they try to impose that on all thinking people.

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.

History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles.

The young do not demand omniscience. They know it is unattainable. They do demand sincerity.

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

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