Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Intarsia

Posted on September 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Intarsia: Decoration of a wood surface by inlaying a design in such materials as mother-of-pearl, metal, ivory, etc.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Term of Art: Auteur Theory

Posted on September 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

“auteur theory: A theory of film criticism and analysis that derived from the writings of Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, and others, which appeared in the influential magazine Cahiers du cinema in the early 1950s. In an article printed in Cahiers in 1954, Truffaut proposed “la politique des auteurs” in an effort to free directors from traditional script-dominated films. Truffaut and his colleagues, who were to become the vanguard of the New Wave, held that, although films are collaborative efforts, they should ultimately bear the artistic stamp of the director, whose personal vision creates the film as an author (auteur) would create a book. The theory was first championed in the U.S, by the critic Andrew Sarris.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Claribel Alegria

Posted on September 26, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Claribel Alegria: (1924-2018) Salvadoran writer, born in Nicaragua. Alegria has published poetry, novelas, and novels. Her work ranges from the intimate lyric to agonized denunciation of the horrors that have beset Central America. Her Sobrevivo (1978) won the Casa de las Americas award in poetry. She excels at a narrative poetry that that is compact, tender, fanciful, and even fantastic, Alegria deals with love, solitude, family life, and injustice from a political and feminist stance, as in La mujer del Rio Sampul (1987; tr Woman of the River, 1990). She has coauthored many books with her husband, Darwin J. Flakoll, particularly testimonial accounts of the Nicaraguan revolution and the lives of Salvadoran women. Cenizas de Izalco (1966; tr Ashes of Izalco, 1989) is a recreation of the peasant uprising of 1932. Luisa en el pais de la realidad (1987; tr Luisa in Realityland, 1987) is an experimental novel.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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E.H. Gombrich on the Origins of Language

Posted on September 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Do you know what else these cavemen invented? Can’t you guess? They invented talking; they invented having real conversations with one another, using words. Of course animals also make noises—they can cry out when they feel pain and make warning calls when danger threatens, but they don’t have names for things as human beings do. And prehistoric people were the first creatures to do so. They invented something else that was wonderful too: pictures. Many of these can still be seen today, painted on the walls of caves. No painter alive today could do better. The animals they depict don’t exist anymore, they were painted so long ago. Elephants with long thick coats of hair and great, curving tusks—wooly mammoths—and other Ice Age animals.”

Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

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Adduce

Posted on September 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Adduce (verb) To bring up as proof or an example; introduce for consideration or discussion; cite. Adjective: adducible, adduceable.

‘Sir Arthur Quiller Couch (‘Q’)…adduced the whole body of English literature in order to maintain that American literature was a provincial appendage and that its most distinguished litterateurs proved the primacy of the English language bye being well within the mainstream of the English of England.’ Alastair Cooke, in On Mencken.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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A Mathematician’s Lament

Posted on September 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

This reading, “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart is something my pal Bob Shepherd at Praxis sent my way. I regret admitting that I haven’t read it in its entirety, but if Bob says it’s worth my time, I am confident it is. This essay, which Mr. Lockhart expanded into a book, is available all over the Internet as a PDF, so, happily, I’m violating no copyright in placing it here on Mark’s Text Terminal.

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Term of Art: Praxis

Posted on September 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“(1) Practical application of learning; habitual, customary practice of an art, a science, or a skill. (2) A series of tests prepared by the Educational Testing Service and used by many states for teaching licencing and certification. Praxis I measures basic academic skills of would-be teachers; Praxis II measures their general and subject-specific knowledge and teaching skills; and Praxis III assesses their classroom performance.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Achaeans

Posted on September 24, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Achaeans: In Homer, the name by which the Greeks of heroic times spoke of themselves. Culturally we would call them Mycenaeans. They have been identified both with the Ahhiyawa, mentioned by the Hittites as one of their western neighbors, and the Akawasha, listed by the Egyptians as Peoples of the Sea. In historical times the name was limited to the Greeks of southwest Thessaly and the northern Peloponnese.

Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.

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J.B. Sears on School Principals Then and Now–i.e. 1918

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“The occasional principal. An occasional principal feels called upon to exercise his authority at every turn, and is satisfied with his accomplishment only when teachers fear him. The principal hews exactly to the line. If his curriculum calls for compositions of three paragraphs in the sixth grade, then three it must be or the teacher will receive a demerit mark.

Such principals are rapidly giving place to a new type of educational director who rules by virtue of a scientific understanding of his work, and by personal qualities of leadership, rather than by authority which has been delegated to him. Such a principal deals with facts and with personalities; gives directions, rather than orders; leads, rather than drives; and expects his teachers to think for themselves.”

Excerpted from: Sears, J.B. Classroom Organization and Control. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

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Euripides on Learning and Youth

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future.”

Euripides (480-406 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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