Silvia Cachia > Silvia's Quotes

“A person's a person, no matter how small.”
― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!

“Andábamos sin buscarnos, pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos”
― Julio Cortazar, Rayuela

“The central idea of the present book is very simple. It is that education is not primarily about the acquisition of information. It is not even about the acquisition of ‘skills’ in the conventional sense, to equip us for particular roles in society. It is about how we become more human (and therefore more free, in the truest sense of that word). This is a broader and a deeper question, but no less practical. Too often we have not been educating our humanity. We have been educating ourselves for doing rather than for being.”
― Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
― E.M. Forster

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Narrow is the mansion of my soul;
enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“You have inherited the Divine nature, says Peter, now screw your attention down and form habits, give diligence, concentrate. 'Add' means all that character means. No man is born either naturally or supernaturally with character, he has to make character. Nor are we born with habits; we have to form habits on the basis of the new life God has put into us.”
― Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

“So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can’t stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn’t happen.” “If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there’d be no pretty women.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“When you internalize an author whose vision or philosophy is both rich and out of fashion, you gain a certain immunity from the pressures of the contemporary. The modern world, with it's fads, propaganda, and advertising, is forever trying to herd us into conformity. Great literature can help us to remain fad-proof.”
― Joseph Sobran

“There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together.”
― Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“The question is not, -- how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”
― Charlotte Mason, School Education: Developing A Curriculum

“In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is one. His constant assertion of self, as far as he thinks of it at all, appears to him a perfectly normal things. He is willing to share himself, sometimes even to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but never to dethrone himself. No matter how far down the scale of social acceptance he may slide, he is still in his own eyes a king on a throne, and no one, not even God, can take that throne from him.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“When book and reader's furrowed brow meet, it isn't always the book that's stupid.”
― William H. Gass

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like 'deadly dull' or 'excruciatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly...but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets' checkouts, airports' gates, SUVs' backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. The terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called 'information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“What is it about autism that makes two rational, educated adults torture themselves in this way? Playing the blame game is not healthy and helps no one. Autism does that. It grabs you and, if you’re not careful, it drags you down with it. Despite all the progress made, I’ve felt its pull lately. But we must not let it get the better of us. I propose a new version of the blame game. In this version we ask, ‘Where did he get those beautiful eyes from? That smile? That gorgeous hair and stunning face? Who’s responsible for his amazing reading ability and astonishing memory? Where did those dancing skills come from? And the musical ability?’ Trouble is, my wife would win that version too! Nonetheless, these are the questions we should be asking because, ultimately, they are his defining features, not autism.”
― B's Dad, Life with an Autistic Son

“I have two settings as a dad: normal and special mode. Normal mode is used with my eldest son, aged eight. It involves all the regular dad stuff, such as knowing the answers to every possible question, teaching him to ride his bike and generally being hands-on and involved. Special mode is quite different. All of the skills of normal mode apply, and then some. Special mode involves enormous powers of endurance, negotiation, problem solving, vigilance, strength, forbearance, deciphering, arbitration and above all, patience. To be honest, I’m a bit rubbish at all of those things but I strive for them nonetheless, because special mode is required for my youngest son, aged five and diagnosed as high functioning autistic. The two styles of parenting could not be more different.”
― B's Dad, Life with an Autistic Son

“We build emotional literacy, first, by being able to identify and name our emotions; second, by recognizing the emotional content of voice and facial expression, or body language; and, third, by understanding the situations or reactions that produce emotional states. By this we mean becoming aware of the link between loss and sadness, between frustration and anger, or threats to pride or self-esteem and fear. In our experience with families, we find that most girls get lots of encouragement from an early age to be emotionally literate—to be reflective and expressive of their own feelings and to be encouragement, and their emotional illiteracy shows, at a young age, when they act responsive to the feelings of others. Many boys do not receive this kind of with careless disregard for the feelings of others at home, at school, or on the playground. Mothers are often shocked by the ferocity of anger displayed by little boys, their sons of four or five who shout in their faces, or call them names, or even try to hit them. One of the most common complaints about boys is that the are aggressive and 'seem not to care.' We have heard the same complaint from veteran teachers who are stunned by the power of boy anger and disruption in their classes. Too often, adults excuse this behavior as harmless 'immaturity,' as if maturity will arrive someday—like puberty—to transform a boy's emotional life. But we do boys no favor by ignoring the underlying absence of awareness. Boys' emotional ignorance clearly imposes on others, but it costs them dearly, too.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“If you ask a boy, 'How did that make you feel?' he very often won't know how to respond. He'll talk instead about what he did or plans to do about the problem. Some boys don't even have the words for their feelings--sad or angry or ashamed--for instance. A large part of our work with boys and men is to help them understand their emotional life and develop an emotional vocabulary.”
― Dan Kindlon, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

“La vida es una guerra sin tregua, y se muere con las armas en la mano.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, El amor, las mujeres y la muerte

“Me haré a la idea de que te soñé –dijo-. Porque la verdad es que te conozco de vista desde hace mucho tiempo, pero me gustas más cuando te sueño. Entonces hago de ti lo que quiero. No como ahora que, como tú ves, no hemos podido hacer nada.”
― Juan Rulfo, Un pedazo de noche

“Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with a comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Yo detestaba a Los Beatles. Salir de la escuela, abordar un camión repleto, ir apretujado una hora, cambiar a un trolebús para media hora más de trayecto. , descender y cruzar campos de futbol encharcados para llegar a la colonia, a mi mundo de chinchillas desolladas, de judokas ultracatólicos, de muchachas cayendo desde seis metros de altura, de un perro lobo metido en peleas de perros y escuchar "she loves you, ye, ye, ye" simplemente no cuadraba.
Nada en Los Beatles, absolutamente nada, ni en sus letras acarameladas, ni en su música pegajosa, ni en sus películas banales, hallé un resquicio de mi realidad.”
― Guillermo Arriaga, El salvaje

“There is ever the prior question of plain duty, with which nothing else, however tempting or promising of success, can come into conflict; and such seasons may be only those when our faith and patience are put on trial, so as to bring it clearly before us, whether or not, quite irrespective of all else, we are content to leave everything in the hands of God.”
― Alfred Edersheim, Bible History Old Testament

“The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Quiero ver con mis propios ojos a la cierva durmiendo junto al león, a la víctima besando a su verdugo. Sobre este deseo reposan todas las religiones, y yo tengo fe. Quiero estar presente cuando todos se enteren del porqué de las cosas. ¿Pero qué papel tienen en todo esto los niños? No puedo resolver esta cuestión. Todos han de contribuir con su sufrimiento a la armonía eterna, ¿pero por qué han de participar en ello los niños? No se comprende por qué también ellos han de padecer para cooperar al logro de esa armonía, por qué han de servir de material para prepararla. Comprendo la solidaridad entre el pecado y el castigo, pero esta no puede aplicarse a un niño inocente. Que este sea culpable de las faltas de sus padres es una cuestión que no pertenece a nuestro mundo y que yo no comprendo.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Los Hermanos Karamazov

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night