#Engagement Quotes

“Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.”

“Life has a way of demanding that you live it.”

“Read proudly--put the duty of being read invariably on the author. If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed, but I shall not make-believe I am charmed.”

“There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.”

“When fear enters the heart of a man at hearing the names of candidates and the reading of laws that are proposed, then is the State safe, but when these things are heard without regard, as above or below us, then is the Commonwealth sick or dead.”

“The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way.”

“The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it.”

“Life is never boring, but some people choose to be bored.”

“If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known. If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long.”

“I have an outline but never use a teleprompter. That kills the connection.”

“No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.”

“The tendency is to blame boredom on the environment. "This town is really dull" or "What a boring speaker." The particular town or speaker is never dull, it is you experiencing the boredom, and you can eliminate it by doing something else with your mind or energy at that moment.”

“All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.”

“Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, together; the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing.”

“The student is to read history actively and not passively.”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“When you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”

“The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.”

“The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.”

“I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things.”

“If watching is all you're going to do, then you're going to watch your life go by without you.”

“I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things. Lecturing to children is no answer to delinquency. Preaching won't keep youngsters out of trouble, but keeping their minds occupied will.”

“I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, 'If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.'”

“In the beginning I remember when I would spend three hours a day on MySpace just trying to comment everyone back, and now, I spend a half hour a night on MySpace just putting up new stuff and answering people back and monitoring all the fan sites, and saying hi and thank you. I'm still way on top of it. I haven't grown out of it because it'll always be something that helped launch my career, and I'm going to keep maintaining it.”

“Education isn't play--and it can't be made to look like play. It is hard, hard work. But it can be made interesting work.”

“Want More Advice Like This?”

“Go forth into the busy world and love it. Interest yourself in its life, mingle kindly with its joys and sorrows.”

“You go to your TV to turn your brain off. You go to the computer when you want to turn your brain on.”

“I've got to tell you, the Internet is a place you go when you want to turn your brain on, and television is a place you go when you want to turn your brain off. I'm not at all convinced that the twain will meet.”

“To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”

“Most people live dejectedly in worldly joys or sorrows. They sit on the sidelines and do not join the dance.”

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”

“I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

“If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.”

“Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.”

“Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you've got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.”

“And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.”

“The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.”

“When hecklers stand up, I get a mental jump for joy. It gives me something to get my teeth into - and the audiences love it.”

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”

“I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.”

“I speak and the child plays: who can be more serious than we are?”

“Don't be a spectator, don't let life pass you by.”

“I don't vote. I don't do no voting.”

“Persuasive communication involves enthusiasm, animation, audience participation, authenticity and spontaneity.”

“Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" - because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.”

“Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.”

“I think it's the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page”

“The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.”