At it's highest level, the purpose of teaching is not to teach—it is to inspire the desire for learning. Once a student's mind is set on fire, it will find a way to provide its own fuel.

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.

A 'penchant for telling the truth' can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor's wife.

Every rule in the book can be broken, except one - be who you are, and become all you were meant to be.

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.

Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat.