Many of the snarly bad-tempered teachers whom we remember with hatred were really nice people soured by years of anxiety and penny-pinching.

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

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

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.

The teacher's chief difficulty is poverty. He (or she) belongs to a badly paid profession. He cannot dress and live like a workman, but he is sometimes paid as little as an unskilled laborer.

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.

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