Deborah Gorman > Deborah's Quotes

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
― Mother Teresa

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.”
― Noah Webster

“Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”
― Noah Webster

“When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.”
― Noah Webster

“Johnny couldn't read until half a year ago for the simple reason that nobody ever showed him how.”
― Rudolf Flesch

“The gulf between science and education has been harmful. A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make reading more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure.”
― Mark Seidenberg

“The gulf between science and education has been harmful. A look at the science reveals that the methods commonly used to teach children are inconsistent with basic facts about human cognition and development and so make learning to read more difficult than it should be. They inadvertently place many children at risk for reading failure. They discriminate against poorer children who could have become successful readers. Many children who do manage to learn to read under these conditions wind up disinterested in the activity. In short, what happens in classrooms isn't adequate for many children, and this shows in the quality of this country's literacy achievement. Reading is under pressure for other reasons, but educational theories and practices may accelerate its marginalization.”
― Mark Seidenberg

“The serious way to improve reading-- how well we comprehend a text and yes, speed and efficiency-- is this (apologies, Michael Pollan):

Read. As much as possible. Mostly new stuff.”
― Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight

“The path to orthographic expertise begins with practice practice practice but leads to more more more. Only a limited amount of spelling can be taught, and instruction typically ends by fourth grade. Orthographic expertise is not acquired through the years of deliberate practice required to become an expert at playing chess or the tuba. We don't study orthographic patterns in order to be able to read; we gain orthographic expertise by reading. In the course of gathering all that spelling data, a person can also enjoy some books.”
― Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight

“However, our culture's emphasis on the importance of reading to children creates the impression that it plays the same role in learning to read as speaking to children plays in their learning to talk.
That's not correct. Whereas talking with children guarantees that they will learn to speak (in the absence of pathological interference), reading to children does not guarantee that they will learn to read. In short, reading to children is not the same as teaching children to read. I emphasize this point because the mantra about reading to children makes it seem that this is all that is required. A child who has difficulty learning to read therefore has not been read to enough. Among the first questions that will be asked of the parents of a childe who is struggling is whether they read to the child and if there are books in the home. Reading to children is important but not sufficient; children benefit from it, some quite a lot, but it neither obviates the role of instruction nor vaccinates against dyslexia. Children who are read to until the cow jumps over the moon can still have difficulty becoming readers.”
― Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight

“Unlike mozzarella and engineering, reading aloud and comprehension are closely connected in English. Children who struggle when reading texts aloud do not become good readers if left to read silently; their dysfluency merely becomes inaudible. Reading aloud and silent comprehension are causally connected because they both make use of the phonology -> semantics pathway.”
― Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
― Mark Twain

“Phonics never went away; it was outsourced. If the schools were not providing adequate basic skills instruction, concerned parents could try to fill the gap by other means.”
― Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight