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.

The Perils of Adolescence

Posted on April 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

“The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”

Quentin Crisp

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: Saul Bellow’s “Herzog”

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

“There is no effort toward decency–many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.”

America

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Sir Richard Steele on Reading as Regimen

Posted on April 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.”

Sir Richard Steele (1675-1729)

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

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Kudos to the Student Journalists at Pittsburg High School!

Posted on April 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

When high school students, working at their school’s paper, do a better job of scrutinizing an administrator’s credentials than the people charged with hiring him or her, then you know there is a teacher doing something right.

Which is why this article about a group of student journalists in Pittsburg, Kansas, who did exactly that, is cool as hell.

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Rotten Reviews: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Posted on April 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“A gross trifling with every fine feeling…. Mr. Clemens has no reliable sense of propriety.”

Springfield Republican

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Robert Benchley on Homework

Posted on April 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment.”

Robert Benchley

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: Wuthering Heights

Posted on March 29, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Here are all the faults of Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte) are magnified a thousand fold, and the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read.”

James Lorimer, North British Review

“…wild, disjointed and improbable…the people who make up the drama, which is tragic enough in its consequences, are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.”

The Examiner

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Helen Keller on the Excitement of Teaching

Posted on March 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

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

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Rotten Reviews: The Good Earth

Posted on March 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Since Mrs. Buck does not understand the meaning of the Confucian separation of man’s kingdom from that of woman, she is like someone trying to write a story of the European Middle Ages without understanding the rudiments of chivalric standards and the institution of Christianity.”

New Republic

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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Karl Kraus on Stupidity as an Elemental Force

Posted on March 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.”

Karl Kraus

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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