Evan Esar Quotes

I am tired of knowing nothing and being reminded of it all the time.

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

Nothing is more tiresome than a superannuated pedagogue.

Out of my peripheral vision, I see Four shove the door open and walk out. Apparently this fight isn't interesting enough for him. Or maybe he's going to figure out why everything's spinning like a top, and I don't blame him; I want to know the answer too.

Continuous eloquence is tedious.

Ev'n wit's a burthen, when it talks too long.

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

Richard was a riddle with no answer, and I was tired of playing a game I couldn't win.

If the attitude of the teacher toward the material is positive, enthusiastic, committed and excited, the students get that. If the teacher is bored, students get that and they get bored, quickly, instinctively.

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.

Boredom ... causes us to neglect more duties than does interest.

Do not, do not, do not books for ever hammer at people like perpetual bells? When, between two books, silent sky appears: be glad

Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.

It might be one thing to think about putting on a dress, but when you're actually putting on a dress, it's a weird thing, because you're going, "Huh. I'm putting on a dress. Do I leave my underwear on? Do I get some other underwear? Is there something special I should wear?" All that dumb stuff. I'd never had any interest in putting on my mom's clothes, except to think, "Well, they are nice clothes..."

I guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom.

I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.

Boredom slays more of existence than war.

What is the task of higher education? To make a man into a machine. What are the means employed? He is taught how to suffer being bored.

...boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.

It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others.

Bad teaching wastes a great deal of effort, and spoils many lives which might have been full of energy and happiness.

Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

He was weary of the uncertainty of the vicious circle of that eternal war that always found him in the same place, but always older, wearier, even more in the position of not knowing why, or how, or even when.

...for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching...by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain.