Preparatory School Quotes

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To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
What do you think?" shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, "you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?" cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies' hands.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing.
John Cheever
She couldn’t picture anyone falling madly in love with such a person as Fish. What a name, Fish...Fish: think cold, slippery, detached. Benedict: think dry scholarly monk from the Dark Ages. Denniston: think English preparatory school, stolid country squire. Nothing about his name sounded the least bit romantic.
Regina Doman (Waking Rose (A Fairy Tale Retold #3))
The siblings wished that if Mr. Poe were really jealous of them he would attend Prufrock Preparatory School himself, and they could work at the bank.
Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #5))
this life is a kind of preparatory school for the great life that is awaiting us beyond death and time.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount)
For true art there is no such thing as preparatory schooling, but there are certainly preparations; the best, however, is when the least pupil takes a share in master's work. Colour-grinders have turned into very good artists.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings)
Please excuse the torn edges of this note. I am writing to you from inside the shack the Baudelaire orphans were forced to live in while at Prufrock Preparatory School, and I am afraid that some of the crabs tried to snatch my stationery away from me. On Sunday night, please purchase a ticket for seat 10-J at the Erratic Opera Company’s performance of the opera Faute de Mieux. During Act Five, use a sharp knife to rip open the cushion of your seat. There you should find
Lemony Snicket (The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events #4))
the secret associations, the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together,
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
I made my first public appearance on the stairs up to the school nurse's room, at St. Peter's Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, on September 13, 1948.
John Cleese (So, Anyway...)
Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world.
E.M. Forster
The first years of my life are of no imprtance. At the age of nine, I was packed off to a preparatory school in the South of England, and for the next four years led the usual life of a preparatory-school boy. I indulged in midnight feasts and was periodically beaten.
Ludovic Kennedy
But Brinker came in. I think he made a point of visiting all the rooms near him the first day. “Well, Gene,” his beaming face appeared around the door. Brinker looked the standard preparatory school article in his gray gabardine suit with square, hand-sewn-looking jacket pockets, a conservative necktie, and dark brown cordovan shoes. His face was all straight lines— eyebrows, mouth, nose, everything—and he carried his six feet of height straight as well. He looked but happened not to be athletic, being too busy with politics, arrangements, and offices. There was nothing idiosyncratic about Brinker unless you saw him from behind; I did as he turned to close the door after him. The flaps of his gabardine jacket parted slightly over his healthy rump, and it is that, without any sense of derision at all, that I recall as Brinker’s salient characteristic, those healthy, determined, not over-exaggerated but definite and substantial buttocks.
John Knowles
A morning breeze blew through the campus of Prufrock Preparatory School, rustling the brown lawn and knocking against the stone arch with the motto printed on it. "Memento Mori"-"Remember you will die." The Baudelaire orphans looked up at the motto and vowed that before they died, they would solve this dark and complicated mystery that cast a shadow over their lives.
Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #5))
So . . . it’s kind of like evil spy school.” Joshua frowned. “I suppose. Although we prefer to call it the Wiseman Preparatory Academy.” “Why?” “Because ‘Evil Spy School’ sounds a little suspicious, don’t you think?
Stuart Gibbs (Evil Spy School)
I had been nervous about not doing well in college. During my first class, I looked at the notes the boy next to me was taking. His supply and demand curves seemed more neatly drawn than mine. Nearly everyone appeared to have gone to preparatory schools and already knew such odd things as the fact that there was no inflation during the Middle Ages. Very few, however, were willing to work the way I did. When I would come out of Firestone Library at two in the morning, walk past the strange statues scattered around campus, and then sit at my desk in my room till the trees in the yard appeared out of the darkness, I felt that I was achieving something, that every hour I worked was generating almost physical value, as if I could touch the knowledge I was gaining through my work. One weekend, I came home to my parents and worked all Saturday night. In the morning, my mother saw me at my desk and brought me a glass of milk. Later, in Birju’s room, she said to him, “Your brother can eat pain. He can sit all day at his desk and eat pain.
Akhil Sharma (Family Life)
Income from the Maryland province had already helped finance the school that would become Saint Louis University in Missouri and established the Washington Seminary, which later became Gonzaga College High School, in the nation's capital. It also supported Georgetown Preparatory School, a private Catholic high school now located in North Bethesda, Maryland, which was once part of Georgetown College. ... Meanwhile, Jesuits based west of the Mississippi River, who also relied on slave labor, ran colleges in Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio.
Rachel L. Swarns (The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church)
The “IQ fundamentalist” Arthur Jensen put it thusly in his 1980 book Bias in Mental Testing (p. 113): “The four socially and personally most important threshold regions on the IQ scale are those that differentiate with high probability between persons who, because of their level of general mental ability, can or cannot attend a regular school (about IQ 50), can or cannot master the traditional subject matter of elementary school (about IQ 75), can or cannot succeed in the academic or college preparatory curriculum through high school (about IQ 105), can or cannot graduate from an accredited four-year college with grades that would qualify for admission to a professional or graduate school (about IQ 115). Beyond this, the IQ level becomes relatively unimportant in terms of ordinary occupational aspirations and criteria of success. That is not to say that there are not real differences between the intellectual capabilities represented by IQs of 115 and 150 or even between IQs of 150 and 180. But IQ differences in this upper part of the scale have far less personal implications than the thresholds just described and are generally of lesser importance for success in the popular sense than are certain traits of personality and character.
Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried Razumihin,
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
To the Realists.—Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before you alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it,—oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist?—and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example—oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human element therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do that! If ye could forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling,—your whole history as man and beast! There is no "reality" for us—nor for you either, ye sober ones,—we are far from being so alien to one another as ye suppose, and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of drunkenness.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
To the Realists. Ye sober beings, who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy, and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, ye call yourselves realists, and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you; before you alone reality stands unveiled, and ye yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it, oh, ye dear images of Sais! But are not ye also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist? and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist! Ye still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example oh, that is an old, primitive "love"! In every feeling, in every sense-impression, there is a portion of this old love: and similarly also some kind of fantasy, prejudice, irrationality, ignorance, fear, and whatever else has become mingled and woven into it. There is that mountain! There is that cloud! What is "real" in them? Remove the phantasm and the whole human element therefrom, ye sober ones! Yes, if ye could do that! If ye could forget your origin, your past, your preparatory schooling, your whole history as man and beast! There is no "reality" for us nor for you either, ye sober ones, we are far from being so alien to one another as ye suppose; and perhaps our good-will to get beyond drunkenness is just as respectable as your belief that ye are altogether incapable of drunkenness.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
BITCH THE POT Tea and gossip go together. At least, that’s the stereotypical view of a tea gathering: a group of women gathered around the teapot exchanging tittle-tattle. As popularity of the beverage imported from China (‘tea’ comes from the Mandarin Chinese cha) increased, it became particularly associated with women, and above all with their tendency to gossip. Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue lists various slang terms for tea, including ‘prattle-broth’, ‘cat-lap’ (‘cat’ being a contemporary slang for a gossipy old woman), and ‘scandal broth’. To pour tea, meanwhile, was not just to ‘play mother’, as one enduring English expression has it, but also to ‘bitch the pot’ – to drink tea was to simply ‘bitch’. At this time a bitch was a lewd or sensual woman as well as a potentially malicious one, and in another nineteenth-century dictionary the phraseology is even more unguarded, linking tea with loose morals as much as loquaciousness: ‘How the blowens [whores] lush the slop. How the wenches drink tea!’ The language of tea had become another vehicle for sexism, and a misogynistic world view in which the air women exchanged was as hot as the beverage they sipped. ‘Bitch party’ and ‘tabby party’ (again the image of cattiness) were the terms of choice for such gossipy gatherings. Men, it seems, were made of stronger stuff, and drank it too. Furthermore, any self-respecting man would ensure his wife and daughters stayed away from tea. The pamphleteer and political writer William Cobbett declared in 1822: The gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. The girl that has been brought up, merely to boil the tea kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to affix his affections upon her. In the twenty-first century, to ‘spill the T’ has become a firm part of drag culture slang for gossiping. T here may stand for either ‘truth’ or the drink, but either way ‘weak tea’ has come to mean a story that doesn’t quite hold up – and it’s often one told by women. Perhaps it’s time for bitches to make a fresh pot.
Susie Dent (Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment For Every Day of the Year)
The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me. — And, considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears! ... To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans? — All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably — that first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road, — the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was ready: — and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-discipline, for ourselves — for certain bad instincts, certain Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies — that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole integrity of knowledge — all these things were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! More, there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! Not as mere brain-drilling! Not as “German” culture, with its loutish manners! But as body, as bearing, as instinct — in short, as reality ....
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ)
Most Georgia educators and advocates will tell you there are 180 school districts in the state. D JJ officials will eagerly correct you. The Georgia Preparatory Academy, the official name of D JJ educational programs, is school district No. 181.
Anonymous
The student with whom Hal shared a bedroom, Englishman John Abel Smith, bore educational credentials that Hal could only dimly conceive. John was the namesake of a renowned merchant banker and British Member of Parliament. He had attended Eton, one of the world’s most famous preparatory schools, before entering Cambridge, where he had “read” under the personal tutelage of English scholars. Hal began to understand the difference between his public-school education and the background of his roommates when he surveyed them relative to a reading list he came across. It was titled, “One Hundred Books Every Educated Person Ought to Have Read.” George Montgomery and Powell Cabot had read approximately seventy and eighty, respectively. John Abel Smith had read all but four. Hal had read (though not necessarily finished) six. Hal also felt his social inferiority. He had long known that his parents weren’t fashionable. His mother never had her hair done in a beauty parlor. His father owned only one pair of dress shoes at a time and frequently took long trips abroad with nothing but his briefcase and a single change of underwear, washing his clothes—including a “wash-and-wear” suit—in hotel sinks at night. That was part of the reason why Hal took an expensive tailored suit—a broad-shouldered pinstripe—and a new fedora hat to Boston. He knew that he needed to rise to a new level, fashion-wise. But he realized that his fashion statement had failed when Powell Cabot asked, late in October, to borrow his suit and hat. Hal’s swell of pride turned to chagrin when Powell explained his purpose—he had been invited to a Halloween costume party, and he wanted to go as a gangster.
Robert I. Eaton (I Will Lead You Along: The Life of Henry B. Eyring)
The boys have been a loving lifeline for the Princess in her isolated position. “They mean everything to me,” she is fond of saying. However, in September this year, when Prince Harry joins his elder brother at Ludgrove preparatory school, Diana will have to face the prospect of an empty nest at Kensington Palace. “She realizes that they are going to develop and expand and that soon a chapter in her own life will be complete,” observes James Gilbey.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
One should not have to spend four years in graduate school in order to learn how to read. Four years of graduate school, in addition to twelve years of preparatory education and four years of college—that adds up to twenty full years of schooling. It should not take that long to learn to read. Something is very wrong if it does.
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book)
Listen!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but it only added fuel to the flames. “What do you think?” shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
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You think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to!
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
Whereas some schools of Buddhism distinguish more sharply between the preparatory practice of concentration and the liberating practice of insight, Zen views concentration and insight as two sides of the same coin: when the mind is cleared, settled, and focused, it naturally attains insight and manifests its innate wisdom.
Bret W. Davis (Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism)
I like people talking nonsense. Talking nonsense is humanity's only privilege over the rest of creation. If you talk nonsense, you'll find your way to the truth! Talking nonsense is what makes me human. No one ever found his way to the truth without first getting things wrong fourteen times, or even a hundred and fourteen times, and that's a good thing in its way; the trouble is we're not even capable of getting things wrong with our own brains! You can talk nonsense to me, if it's nonsense of your own, and I'll kiss you for it. Talking nonsense of your own-that's almost better than talking someone else's truth; in the first case you're human, in the second you're nothing but a parrot! Truth won't go away, but life can get choked up; we've seen that happen. Well, what are we now? In science, progress, thought, invention, ideals, desires, liberalism, judgement, experience, and all, all, all, all, all of it, we're every one of us, without exception, still stuck in the first, pre-preparatory class of high school! We've got fond of living off other people's ideas, and now we're addicted to it! Isn't that right? Isn't it?' cried Razumikhin, shaking and squeezing both ladies' arms. 'Isn't that so?
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
So understood, the art of archery is rather like a preparatory school for Zen, for it enables the beginner to gain a clearer view, through the works of his own hands, of events which are not in themselves intelligible.
Eugen Herrigel (Zen in the Art of Archery)
Private. Not to be opened," was written in capital letters on the cover. He raised his eyebrows. It was the sort of thing one wrote in one's Latin Grammar while one was still at one's preparatory school. "Black is the raven, black is the rook, But blacker the thief who steals this book!" It was curiously childish, he thought, and he smiled to himself. He opened the book. What he saw made him wince as though he had been struck.
Aldous Huxley (Crome Yellow)
I struggled to remember the last time I'd been forced to interact with Pierce Miller. Since he advanced from Troy Preparatory Academy's hockey team to USA Hockey's National Team Development Program, I'd seen a lot less of him. Less at the rink because his new team practiced at an ice arena in Plymouth, a few cities over and less at school because of his travel schedule with the team.
Erin Fletcher (All Laced Up (All Laced Up, #1))
Hana, the bravest wireless operator in the entire camp. No one is quite like her. She does the night shift in the wireless room, and goes with the girls to her military positions.” I looked at her. Her eyes were green, her hair was tied back in a pony tail. She had a feminine air despite the seriousness which her difficult assignments imparted to her. I asked her: “It’s unusual for a girl to be on duty at night all by herself!” “I’m not afraid of the night. Sometimes I used to be on duty at night, and I was not scared. The young men would be tied up along the combat lines and I would keep operating the wireless. At first, my parents wouldn’t agree to my work because they were worried about me. But I’ve done a three-month militia training course. I did it when the revolution entered the camp, and training began. They offered a course for girls. I was fourteen years old. It was a very strenuous course and I was in the third preparatory class at school.
Liana Badr (The Eye of the Mirror)
The high school I attended was named the Cathedral Preparatory School for Young Catholic Boys. It was a prep school, preparing us for one of two futures: either playing football or spending our lives getting sucker-punched by those who did play football.
Dinty W. Moore (Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals)
T.J. hurried among Hayden Preparatory Academy’s old and weathered buildings with green ivy clinging to the faded bricks and worn brass plaques mounted above the doors, each bearing the name of the building. Sprawled out over a crisp autumn woodland, Hayden looked more like a traditional New England college than a mere high school.
Stacy Juba (Face-Off (Hockey Rivals Book One))
Violet told Hector about the dreadful day at the beach when she and her siblings learned from Mr. Poe that their parents had been killed in the fire that had destroyed their home, and Klaus told Hector about the days they spent in Count Olaf’s care. Sunny—with some help from Klaus and Violet, who translated for her—told him about poor Uncle Monty, and about the terrible things that had happened to Aunt Josephine. Violet told Hector about working at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, and Klaus told him about enrolling at Prufrock Preparatory School, and Sunny related the dismal time they had living with Jerome and Esmé Squalor at 667 Dark Avenue. Violet told Hector all about Count Olaf’s various disguises, and about each and every one of his nefarious associates, including the hook-handed man, the two powder-faced women, the bald man with the long nose, and the one who looked like neither a man nor a woman,
Lemony Snicket (The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #7))
You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?” cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies’ hands.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)