Quotes from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Sometimes a little song is sweet to hear, even if the orchestra is more accomplished”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Why do these dumb fucks keep guns around the house? They make the world as ruinous as they imagine it is.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“The goal is not necessarily to succeed but to keep trying, to be the kind of person who has ideas and see them through. We’ll”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Today so many creative and devoted teachers not only have to struggle against unimaginative administrations, fearful parents, and wearied colleagues, they have also to battle entire legislative bodies that have never taught a child yet dare to equate educational success or failure with the ability of fourth graders to choose one out of four given answers to mind-numbing questions that have nothing to do with the joy of literature or the elegance of math.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“We do not argue about what happened in the past but discuss what we desire for the future.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Nobody really knows which is happening when the teacher closes the door. At worst, mediocrity. At best, miracles.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“I suppose an active imagination can be a form of madness. Or it can be the thing that keeps you from going mad.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“Mr. Turner gets mad when I say, “I don’t work for you, I work for the children.” But it’s true. Isn’t it? I’ll find out when I get fired, I guess.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

“For the rest of the day I was glad I listened instead of yelled, but I still burned with shame at the thought of what I almost said and at all the occasions I have spoken harshly.”
― Esmé Raji Codell, quote from Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

About the author

Popular quotes

“Okay, let’s pretend to be friends. Just two friends having dinner.” “That doesn’t work in the South. A male friend cannot have dinner with a female friend if the male friend has a wife. It just doesn’t work down here.” “Why not?” “Because men don’t have female friends. No way. I don’t know of a single man in the entire South who is married and has a female friend. I think it goes back to the Civil War.” “I think it goes back to the Dark Ages. Why are Southern women so jealous?” “Because that’s the way we’ve trained them. They learned from us. If my wife met a male friend for lunch or dinner, I’d tear his head off and file for divorce. She learned it from me.” “That makes absolutely no sense.” “Of course it doesn’t.” “Your wife has no male friends?” “None that I know of. If you learn of any, let me know.” “And you have no female friends?” “Why would I want female friends? They can’t talk about football, or duck hunting, or politics, or lawsuits, or anything that I want to talk about. They talk about kids, clothes, recipes, coupons, furniture, stuff I know nothing about. No, I don’t have any female friends. Don’t want any.” “That’s what I love about the South. The people are so tolerant.” “Thank you.”
― John Grisham, quote from A Time to Kill

“He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear space for something better.”
― Charles Frazier, quote from Cold Mountain

“the ladies, young or old. There is no resisting a cockade,”
― Jane Austen, quote from The Complete Novels

“And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation… For he argued thus; that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated… …he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long.”
― Jonathan Swift, quote from Gulliver's Travels

“You can be lonely even when you are loved by many people, since you are still not anybody's one and only.”
― Anne Frank, quote from The Diary of a Young Girl

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.