c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Serving your enemies is the fastest way to learn to love them.
— Will Davis Jr., 10 Things Jesus Never Said: And Why You Should Stop Believing Them
He was king, if he didn’t have enemies he wasn’t doing it right.
— S.E. Zbasnik, The King's Blood
The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects.
— Warder C. Allee, The Social Life Of Animals
If you have too many enemies, it means that you are either too good or too evil!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There are no such enemies So dire as good people, They will rob you, mournfully, And condemn you, weeping, They'll invite you to their home, Welcome you profusely, Ask you all about yourself, To mock and abuse you, Later, mock at you and jeer, To grab you for sure... Without enemies on earth Somehow one can endure.But those good people yet will Everywhere beset you, Even in the other world They will not forget you.
— Taras Shevchenko, Kobzar
Relationships with your enemies; you need to cultivate those, because: "Only true enemies stab you in the front.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
I like to kill my enemies and listen to the lamentations of their women
— Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those--in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists....
— Joseph Brodsky
In reality, there are no enemies; we're all souls in growth, waking up
— James Redfield, The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing.
— C.J. Cherryh, Deceiver
As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial.
— Anton Chekhov, The Essential Tales of Chekhov
In all nature there seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding over memories of spring and summer and apathetically waiting for the inevitable winter. Wherever one looked, on all sides, nature seemed like a dark, infinitely deep, cold pit from which neither Kirilov nor Abogin nor the red half-moon could escape....
— Anton Chekhov, The Essential Tales of Chekhov
Which is a greater sin in the eyes of God: to let a child suffer and die to preserve your reputation, or to become friends with your enemy?
— Jeremy Courtney, Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time
Hate not your enemies; love thy rivals, for this is the only way to convert them into your friends and your partners!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The man she despised had his job back. Her job. Damn it to hell. She’d never be able to live with him now.
— Abby Niles, Britton
The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
— Aesop
You must expect to make enemies.""I never expect to make anything else," he said.
— Susan  Kay, Phantom
Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that is who you become most like, Anna tosses Nietzsche's quote up into the air. She serves up words she has heard me say in the past.
— Patricia Cornwell, The Last Precinct
But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.
— Danielle Trussoni, Angelology
John F. Kennedy says: ‘Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.’ I suggest that forgive your enemies and forget their names too! Don’t leave any stone in your head; keep only the flowers, only the names of the good men!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns are laid at his hand to be carved.
— Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive
— Barbara Deming
In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility. The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behaviour must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
This squirrel is inadequately afraid of humans! Squirrel, I am a threat to you! We are enemies! Please get off my bench! Oh, god! Oh, god! Don't touch me—oh, god!
— John Green
Choose your friends carefully but don’t worry about your enemies, they will choose you
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless it--which is what matters most.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Unless people are prepared to declare themselves your enemies you have to hunt around for them.
— Auberon Waugh
Why is it considered so glorious to kill an enemy, when it is not considered contemptible to create one?
— Anne E.G. Nydam, Vision Revealed
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
— Swami Vivekananda
None could be the most perfect. If indeed any, it is only perfect.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
...“living in oneness with Buddha’s teaching, is a creative life in which everything becomes meaningful.
— Gyomay M. Kubose, Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living
All that you know; or believe to be true;Is no limit for All that Is;on a tiny planet whirling through an Infinite Sky.So be open. Be an empty vessel.Have the innocent curiosity of a childof the Universe. In this Way allow the Universe to flow freely through your Onenessand your profound inner silenceof open heart, mind and Spirit.Surrender all preconception.become only immersed withinthe Infinite Way of Love Light and Oneness
— Leland Lewis, Angel Stories. Angelic Tales of the Universe. Tales 1 through 6.
Beneath all the polarization, we are all God consciousness.
— Lynne Cockrum-Murphy, Unfolding the Mystery of Self: We are Never Alone
Genuine love is ever constant, unchanging. There is no separation by degrees, levels, or kinds. There is no comparison or judgment since there is just one kind and it is inside everyone. Ego and the world around would have us believe otherwise.
— Nanette Mathews
We all come from different paths in life but we can find common ground.
— Nanette Mathews
The non-dual state shows the true oneness of all creatures in this universe.
— Abhijit Naskar, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
All the world's religions speak the same language, they simply use different words.
— Matthew Clark
You will send me to the asylum for the truth,I know, I know!But before,Look within your skin,Hey, can you see me there?
— Sayantan Sen, Oneness - A collection of poetry
Two thousand and five hundred years ago Lord Buddha announced, ‘By self- exertion we will achieve ‘Nirvana’, and then Hinduism announced, ‘By self-mortification and self-exertion we shall achieve the supreme knowledge. But this supreme knowledge means knowledge of oneness. No, not the knowledge of oneness, it is rather oneness only and that is achieved spontaneously.
— Sri Jibankrishna or Diamond
If you love someone or something, you acknowledge and are expressing your oneness with it. Love is simply the recognition of Oneness.
— Russell Anthony Gibbs, The Six Principles of Enlightenment and Meaning of Life
Reach up-to Absence to feel Presence
— Syed Sharukh
A compassionate way of life rooted in oneness and connectivity not only impacts your greater good, but it resonates out into the world, positively impacting the greater good for all.
— Amy  Miller, Beyond Companionship: Connecting with Kindred Souls of Animal Companions.
Embrace yourself, in these times, and acknowledge yourself for the extraordinary progress you are making, as a soul, in every waking moment.
— Rasha
Most organized religions often succeed in enslaving the soul through useless traditions, prejudices and ideological divisions. Yet, true spiritual enlightenment and everlasting freedom can only be found in the perfect wisdom that LOVE is the truest most fundamental foundation of every faith which should, inevitably, lead every seeker down the path to the most profound introspective spiritual understanding one could ever know...we are all one.
— Jason Versey
When you can see God in small things, you'll see God in all things.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
You can follow the religions where God is small,or you can follow the religions where God is all.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
What is God? God is a motion – perpetual motion. This normal motion is always running within a human body. A man has come to this earth to become God. What I have understood? I have only understood that God is one. I have not understood anything except this oneness.
— Sri Jibankrishna or Diamond
Consider the Circle ~ Ponder on the Perigon
— Alexia Penteleόn de aRcturi
A strong team is a group of people that feel like one nation
— Sunday Adelaja
Wherever I go, whomever I meet, I see myself in their eyes, because I am a part of everything, because I love.
— Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
We never stopped being each other.
— Alicen Grey
Our purpose is not Oneness but to realize Oneness. Oneness itself is not something to be achieved. We are One as spirit already. What we are working on is to remember and accept this Oneness.
— Akemi G, Why We Are Born: Remembering Our Purpose through the Akashic Records
When the peace in not inside, we seek it outside. When the peace is not outside, we turn inside. Whether there is internal peace or an internal storm, it spirals outward to everyone you see and everything you touch.
— Franklin Gillette, Compatibility: The Code of Harmony for Love and Unity
He learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke - the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was live. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes meet . . .
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
We are transformational beings gravitating closer to the light of oneness.
— Jason Micheal Ratliff
One who walks in love sees the world through the envelope of their mission.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Drinking the energy of the universeBreathing along with the CosmosWith each breathI am rebornInto a brand new existence.
— Ilchi Lee, Songs of Enlightenment
To see the divine in others, we have to love. Where love is thick, faults are thin. If you really love someone, then it is difficult to find fault with him. His faults seem negligible, for love means oneness. This oneness comes from our conscious acceptance of his reality as it is.
— Sri Chinmoy
Nature is self-renewing as it adjusts to maintain balance. Nature becomes even more vibrant as it yields to allow recycling. It is best to align with success and become nature with your health, wealth, and relationships.
— Franklin Gillette
His teachings, said his disciple Musaeus, had one simple theme: 'Everything comes into being from the One and is resolved into the One again.
— Ann Wroe, Orpheus: The Song of Life
A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet having your feet on this planet.
— Yann Martel, Self
Acceptability is that secret, which brings in surrender,Which brings in totality, which brings in love,From where arises our Oneness.
— Gian Kumar
And what makes humans so sure that thinking is the most important activity in the universe?...I on the contrary have never forgotten that first I existed and then, with a lot of difficulty, I learned to think." (p. 31)
— Sabina Berman, Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World
Look out from within and observe the words, actions, reactions, and feelings that evolve from you. Release the identity with what you have observed if it creates tension and stress. Surely you will dissolve into effortless being that way.
— Franklin Gillette, Compatibility: The Code of Harmony for Love and Unity
When the world is at peace, when all things are tranquil and all men obey their superiors in all their courses, then music can be perfected. When desires and passions do not turn into wrongful paths, music can be perfected. Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos.
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.
— Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
All questions have a basis in love. All answers lead to LOVE. If you can color everything in love, you have all the colors in the world.
— Eve Evangelista, Create and Move Forward in Life
Try to notice-in all your thoughts, sensations, and direct encounters-the objects and 'outside-standers' that make appearance meaningful. For each object encountered or referred to, note it and embrace it in its immediate givenness as being part of 'you'. You can do this both by saying to yourself, "That too is 'I'," and by extending your sense of located awareness to embrace the apparently separate and distant object.This exercise helps to counteract the tendency to polarize experience, which creates a self that is cut off from the rest of reality. It might at first seem to set up a monomaniacal selfishness, but actually, if practiced carefully, it will undermine the idea of a solid and continuous 'self'. The exercise might also seem to cultivate confusion between things themselves and thoughts about these things and about the world. But this is not the case. By initially forcing the subject and object together in this way, we can soon progress to the perception of a 'time' which naturally gives the subject and object as together. This process also shows the felt difference between the thought about a thing and the 'thing itself'-between the reference and its referent-in a new light. We can progress from an artificial intimacy to an uncontrived one, and further, to an intimacy which simply is and which involves neither a self nor an object. This intimacy does not reach out to things elsewhere, nor does it assimilate them all in an ordinary location 'here'.
— Tarthang Tulku, Time, Space & Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality
But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Usually when you ask somebody in college why they are there, they'll tell you it's to get an education. The truth of it is, they are there to get the degree so that they can get ahead in the rat race. Too many college radicals are two-timing punks. The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.
— Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book
You're sure your new roommate won't be like the last one who wore tinfoil socks and had a tendency to occasionally urinate in the refrigerator. You're sure you'll pass Math 106 this time around. You're determined to actually join some clubs this year and not just sit around in your dorm eating spray cheese from a can and watching youtube videos about cats.
— Patrick Rothfuss
What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness ofnormality that is just a myth.
— Anne Rice, Exit to Eden
Take a limitation and turn it into an opportunity. Take an opportunity and turn it into an adventure by dreaming BIG!
— Jo Franz
High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.
— Megan McCafferty, Charmed Thirds
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
— Herman Melville
Hey, Pedro, could you get your shopping cart out of my faculty parking space? Yes, I know you live on the street. But you know how hard it is to find a parking spot on the Upper West Side. After all, you used to be one of my best students! So how's that Columbia degree working out for you? Not so good, huh? Sorry about that. Really! But you know, a college degree isn't like some cheap used car. There's no warantee. Right, there's no Lemon Law either. Buyer beware! Look, Pedro, I don't want to call security again. Yes, I know they're your cousins. What's that? You'll wash my car for a dollar? Well, I guess that's a good deal. Where's your sponge bucket? What's that? You've got a hose? What do you mean, it's tucked in your pants? Hey Pedro -- no, no, no don't -- aw, Pedro!
— Eric Foner, The New American History
Look, Mrs. McGillicuddy, it's not my fault your son jumped out a dorm room window on Christmas eve. I've written over fifty books as a Columbia professor, all right? You don't do that by holding hands with every at-risk undergraduate who says he's homesick, or he's turning gay, or the dog ate his term paper. I write about Lincoln, and freedom, and great ideas. I don't always have time for students. It's like Dean Martin used to say: if you want to talk, go to a priest. Hey -- what's the gun for?
— Eric Foner, The New American History
Christ, seven years of college, down the drain.
— John Belushi
Of a sudden he felt that fraternity life was the only way to exist at college. How could he have doubted? (126)
— Ferrol Sams, The Whisper of the River
Though outwardly Kristina maintained that a clean room was a symptom of a diseased mind (for how could she, while studying the world's greatest thinkers, be bothered with such mundane earthly issues as cleaning?), inwardly she hated untidyness and made a point of spending as little time in the room as possible.
— Paullina Simons, Red Leaves
A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing “classical” music; that two, he was doing it “softly”; and that three, “there were not many readers around in summer.” I was there, a one-man multitude.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions
And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means
— W.E.B. Du Bois
Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.
— Maureen Johnson, Zombies Vs. Unicorns
I was never educated to be an actor. I went to a regular college. It was a great thing for me because I feel that the main thing to get out of college is a thirst for knowledge. College should teach you how to be curious. Most people think that college is the end of education, but it isn't. The ceremony of giving you the diploma is called commencement. And that means you are fit to commence learning because you have learned hot to learn.
— Vincent Price, Vincent Price, His Movies, His Plays, His Life
This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton - and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.
— Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
When you're in college you haven't had that much life. Parents, school, assorted youth activities—that's about it.
— Martha Moody, Best Friends
When I was at the University of California at Berkeley, I went to some classes that must have had more than four hundred students in them. I almost always sat in the far back of the auditorium so I could read the newspaper. I remember that I stayed late one day to ask the professor a question, and when I got up to him, all I could think to myself was, 'So this is what the professor looks like.
— Stephan Pastis, Pearls Sells Out: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury
Enrollments in American colleges tripled between 1955 and 1970, 250% in the Soviet Union, 400% in France, and more than 200% in China by 1965. Gaddis writes, "What governments failed to foresee was that more young people, plus, more education, when combined with a stalemated Cold War, could be a prescription for insurrection. Learning does not easily compartmentalize. How do you prepare students to think for purposes approved by the state, or by their parents, without also equipping them to think for themselves? Youths throughout history had often wished question their elders values. Now, with university educations, their elders had handed them the training to do so. The result was discontent with the world as it was.
— John Gaddis, The Cold War
At Reed College, I learned very quickly that I didn't know nearly enough. I learned, first, that every student there was as smart as I was, and quite a few seemed smarter.
— John Daniel, Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone
It is a well known fact that Abraham Lincoln spent much of his spare time visiting wounded soldiers in Union Army hospitals. I've spent thirty years teaching history at Columbia and I don't think I've spent more than fifteen minutes in the freshman dorm. Are we the ones keeping Lincoln's memory alive? Or are we burying it?
— Eric Foner, Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World
...and often Lisa thought bitterly of the ideas she had held on "college life" before coming to Denton, ideas and images culled from a hundred magazine stories and as many movies. Where were the convertibles, the secret bottles of liquor, the gay young men and their wild girl friends?
— Grace Metalious, The Tight White Collar
Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
I was brand-new in San Francisco, right out of college, and I thought it was thrilling, a guy buying me a drink. I didn’t think, how tacky, this creep is buying me a drink. I thought, how amazing, I put on lipstick and a short skirt and look what can happen.
— Marcy Dermansky, The Red Car
In almost 25 years of experience as a high school guidance counselor, a regional college representative, and a private college counselor, I have noted the kinds of things that make the college process productive, successful, and enjoyable. I have worked with so many students who have blossomed in part due to their college search and application process. It can be a period of maturation and of self-exploration, with an honest assessment of skills and interests, development of task organization and discipline, renewed intrafamily communication, and travel to interesting cities and small college towns. I firmly believe when the journey to college is fully embraced, it can truly be loved.
— Jill Madenberg, Love the Journey to College: Guidance from an Admissions Consultant and Her Daughter
College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had awakened her to the fact that she wanted more.
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
And by the way, I know my title said “10 Reasons” and I only listed “6”. I didn’t learn to count in college.
— James Altucher, 40 Alternatives to College
some people graduate on time. some others graduate at the right time. no matter about the time you graduations, you have to take responsibility to finish your college when you choose to start it. not for your parents, not for your friends, but for you. when you graduate, you'll be at the higher lever than your life before. remember, you don't have to be smarter, all you have to do is be the work harder than others.
— Nunki Artura
He's a cocky SOB. He knew the Nick Adams Stories. Probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.
— Peter Heller, Celine
No matter how much you learn in college, it never prepares you for the real world.
— Donald Allen, Bill Gates' Top 15 Secrets For Success In Life And Business: Rationed Short Guide For Mature Minds That Seek Good Advice And Not To Be Lectured
Et supper?" Foote asked."No, sir," Stoner answered.Mrs. Foote crooked an index finger at him and padded away, Stoner followed her through several rooms into a kitchen, where she motioned him to sit at a table. She put a pitcher of milk and several squares of cold cornbread before him. He sipped the milk, but his mouth, dry from excitement, would not take the bread.Foote came into the room and stood beside his wife. He was a small man, not more than five feet three inches, with a lean face and a sharp nose. His wife was four inches taller, and heavy; rimless spectacles hid her eyes, and her thin lips were tight. The two of them watched hungrily as he sipped his milk. "Feed and water the livestock, slop the pigs in the morning," Foote said rapidly.Stoner looked at him blankly. "What?""That's what you do in the morning," Foote said, "before you leave for your school. Then in the evening you feed and slop again, gather the eggs, milk the cows. Chop firewood when you find time. Weekends, you help me with whatever I'm doing.""Yes, sir," Stoner said.Foote studied him for a moment. "College," he said and shook his head.
— John Williams
Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne, but if you never do, don't grow discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all... college can only help us do it more easily.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.
— Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
It is a shock to many college graduates that their segway into the real world is one of obligation, profound debt, and countless sacrifices of the soul.
— Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu
Harder still was the pretense her studies demanded: the need to dissemble, to parrot her professors' orthodoxies, to feign interest in theories that were of no use to her.
— John Wray, The Lost Time Accidents
You sound like a college freshman taking his first philosophy class way too seriously, but that's good.
— Michael Grant, Eve & Adam
On the hot, fragrant afternoon of my graduation from college it seemed that good fortune was not merely latent but unavoidable, folded and in the bag.
— Geoffrey Wolff, A Day at the Beach: Recollections
Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.
— Mary Karr, Now Go Out There:
Bad things are gonna' happen to you, because they happen to us all. And worrying won't stave the really bad things off. Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides. Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.
— Mary Karr, Now Go Out There:
A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.
— Mary Karr
Don't take on more student loans than your future-self can handle.
— Carol H. Cox
I rub my hand down my face, frustrated. This girl in front of me tests my patience like hell. When she ran to me after her dad kicked her out, I thought she still had feelings for me. She needed a place to stay, and I needed her. I offered her a room, thinking if she was around me every day, she would remember she loves me. I was dead wrong. Somewhere along the way, we switched roles, I became the one who so desperately needed her and she became cold and closed off. She isn’t my savior; she’s my punishment.
— Brittany Butler, Unfazed
This was one of those non-glamorous parts about college that people never tell you about - worrying that the dilapidated apartment hosting a party would fall apart with you in it.
— Alyssa Rose Ivy, Focus
He's like the anti-Ben, but his attention is like a shot of adrenaline.
— Jessica Calla, She Laughs In Pink
Gee, you don’t sugarcoat things, do you?” “At least if I’m at a club, I won’t have you pressuring me.”“No, you’ll have heaps of strangers instead.
— Shaye Evans
Colt, you’re going to be a nurse, not a cop. If anything happens, I’ll pay the fines for you.”“Still don’t need it.”“Why?” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Because you’re still trying to get into Daddy’s good books?”“Shut up,” I muttered, blowing my frustrations into another balloon—it grew between my palms. This had nothing to do with my father.“From what you’ve told me of the guy, he’s a jerking dick, Colt. I don’t know why you’re seeking his approval.
— Shaye Evans, Rescued
Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.)
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
There's always Time and Place for Everything called College
— Manoj Hande
The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expense of it," [John] Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves." Jefferson's fear was that without such a system of public education, the country would end up being ruled by a privileged elite that would recycle itself through a network of private institutions that entrenched their advantage.
— Fareed Zakaria
He gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “Eh, it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses.”Hazel made a face. “I’m pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that.
— Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest
Spending $100 million on a fancy gym is completely unremarkable in contemporary American higher education. Yet $10 million for a really good online biology course that could serve millions of students is seen as an outlandish, unaffordable expense.
— Kevin Carey, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere
If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something.
— Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
The message for all students should be: Put down the bong and get to work, because the number of curious, eager-to-learn peers around the world with the means and ambition to get a great college education is about to increase a thousandfold.
— Kevin Carey
This is the generation that thinks of itself as global citizens but knows little about the world and acts locally. It is the most diverse generation in collegiate history with the strongest relationships between races but they have limited interest in talking about race or reaching across political or generational divides.
— Arthur Levine
Borrow money only for an education that will yield enough of a return in the job market to allow you to pay your loans back.
— Kevin Carey, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere
Now students all seem to be converging on the same self, the successful upper-middle-class professional, impersonating the adult they've already decided they want to become.
— William Deresiewicz
Unbeknownst to me, from the beginning of freshman year Rob and Oswaldo had been drawn away from Yale via their friends on the dining hall and custodial staffs, outward into the city of New Haven. Rob considered these excursions a much-needed dose of reality, the social equivalent of an antidepressant.
— Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Oswaldo was flummoxed by the fact that his friend could be so quiet, almost embarrassed, about his academic acumen, yet so damn loud and proud of his status as a premier campus drug dealer."I've never met anyone so smart but so fucking dumb," he told Rob.
— Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
The word "fronting" was important to Rob. A coward who acted tough was fronting. A nerd who acted dumb was fronting. A rich kid who acted poor was fronting. Rob found the instinct very offensive, and in college he saw it all around.
— Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Despite all the challenges facing higher education in America, from mounting student debt to grade inflation and erratic standards, our system is rightly the world's envy, and not just because our most revered universities remain on the cutting edge of research and attract talent from around the globe. We also have a plenitude and variety of settings for learning that are unrivaled. In light of that, the process of applying to college should and could be about ecstatically rummaging through those possibilities and feeling energized, even elated, by them. But for too many students, it's not, and financial constraints aren't the only reason. Failures of boldness and imagination by both students and parents bear some blame. The information is all out there. You just have to look.
— Frank Bruni
The colleges and other institutions of learning are going too far, in my opinion. I think 50% of those attending educational institutions, having the professions in view, would be better off with a common school education that would enable them to earn a living, rather than sit around in offices and wait for clients. W.A. Clark (MT Senator, 1901-1907)
— Bill Dedman, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
We care (about prison education), very simply, because (prisoners) get out. Almost everyone who is locked up now is going to be set free one day. If we treat prisoners like animals the whole time they are locked up, that's what we'll get when they're back on the streets: wild, dangerous animals.
— Christopher Zoukis, College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons
I stayed with him for three days, and he then asked: ‘Do you know any craft by which to make your living?’ I told him: ‘I am a lawyer, a scientist, a scribe, a mathematician and a calligrapher.’ ‘There is no market for that kind of thing here,’ he replied. ‘No one in this city has any knowledge of science or of writing and their only concern is making money.’ ‘By God,’ I said, ‘I know nothing apart from what I have told you.
— Anonymous
College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.
— Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes
He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now.
— David Levithan, Are We There Yet?
One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.
— Denis Diderot
if you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values.
— Dennis Prager
Think I have made a terrible mistake going to college. Have decided to become a shepherd and spend my days tending to flocks of goats
— Scott Frost
One thing they do not teach you in college is what you will actually be doing in a career of your choosing.
— Joanie Connell, Flying Without a Helicopter: How to Prepare Young People for Work and Life
Campuses are bubbles, artificial environments that insulate students from the life of the competitive marketplace. The more exact truth is that our campuses offer students the privileges of liberty without the corresponding responsibilities.
— Peter Augustine Lawler
The faces of your young people in general are not interesting—I don't mean the children, but the young men and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world." "They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
College towns [are] all the same in that way; same burger, different wrapper.
— Sheri Webber, Devil Went Down: And Hell Came Running
You see, at Rugby I was rather a great man. There one had a share in the ruling of 300 boys, and a good deal of responsibility; but here one has only just to take care of oneself, and keep out of scrapes; and that's what I never could do.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
I don’t understand why Universities only offer undergraduate classes during the day when their professional staff should be smart enough to know that a large percentage of their students are non-traditional.
— Heather Chapple, Write like no one is reading
Colleges seem to want candidates that are so well-rounded they'd have to be two different people use together with mutually exclusive characteristics! They have to be gung ho athletes and sensitive artists, studious nerds and gregarious social networkers, future rulers of the universe and selfless altruists.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
So we might say that the most important thing one can acquire in college is a well-functioning bullshit meter.
— Andrew Delbanco
Of course he had a female following. Was there anything college girls found sexier than being told what to think?
— Mira Jacob, The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing
I thought i had been educated well enough until i left college.
— Paul Bamikole
Did he talk about silos?”“Of course he did,” I said. “We have to break down the silos that separate the academic side of the house from the Student Retention Office, apparently.”Emma wrinkled her nose. “Why is it a good thing to break silos? All that happens when you break a silo is that the grain spills out. Or the missile falls over.
— Frankie Bow, The Musubi Murder
A month into the semester, I would start showing up twenty minutes late to class again. The rewards weren't enough to keep me on task, and life got in the way. My mind wandered to the future, postcollege, when I'd create my own schedule that served my need to eat a rich snack every five to fifteen minutes. As for the disappointment written across the teacher's face? I couldn't, and wouldn't, care.
— Lena Dunham
What we have before us then, is three distinct purposes for a university: the commercial purpose (starting a career), Stephen Pinker’s cognitive purpose (acquiring information and learning how to think) and (William) Deresiewicz’s moral purpose (building an integrated self).
— David Brooks
When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All human beings by nature desire to know.
— Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves -- you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
— Ray Bradbury
When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
— Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America, Bill of Rights and Constitutional Amendments (Including Images of Original
The last year of her college career was wheeling slowly round. She could see ahead her examination and her departure. She had the ash of disillusion gritting under her teeth. Would the next move turn out the same? Always the shining doorway ahead; and then, upon approach, always the shining doorway was a gate into another ugly yard, dirty and active and dead. Always the crest of the hill gleaming ahead under heaven: and then, from the top of the hill only another sordid valley full of amorphous, squalid activity.
— D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
Jefferson and Washington had no idea these idiots would exist, otherwise they would not have made killing illegal.
— Anonymous
AVERT DISASTER, in fact, would have been a perfect school motto—the purpose of the place, as far as Schwartz could tell, was to keep three thousand would-be maniacs sedated by boredom until a succession of birthdays transformed them into adults.
— Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
Jaxon snorted in disbelief. He cupped his sac just to make sure his balls and dick were still there. If he hadn’t been so content in his life he would’ve thought he was growing a vagina.
— Senayda Pierre, Temptation
It was always embarrassing when professors assigned their own books. Even Madeleine, who found all the reading hard going, could tell that Zipperstein’s contribution to the field was reformulative and second-tier.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.
— John Cage, M: Writings '67-'72
What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!
— Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
Carmyn drops her glass from her lips first and bites into the slice of lime she's holding in her other hand. Her lips wrap around the flesh of the fruit, and my dick flexes in earnest. I've watched women suck on me and not look nearly that seductive.
— Angeline Kace, Wicked Thing
I've asked around and haven't found a B.A. yet who doesn't still have nightmares (and I don't speak figuratively) about not being able to find the room where the exam is to be given or about realizing at the last moment that he has not once attended the course.
— Elizabeth Savage, The Last Night at the Ritz
President Obama smoked so much pot in college he never learned to spell. Which is why he's confusing the word "ruining" the country with "running" the country.
— Kilburn Hall
There are three types of student: The golden student pays and loans, the silver student pays but does not learn, the bronze student learns but does not pay.
— J.C. McKeown, A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Cradle of Western Civilization
Stop Dieting...Start Eating CUte
— Alexandra Catalano, From Beer Bongs to Broccoli: The College Kid's Guide to Health and Wellness
Don't ever let anyone tell you that college is for smart people. College eats smart people alive.
— Hannah Moskowitz, Invincible Summer