Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are read more

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university read more

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

My mother would say it is literally ghost writers
who come to me
(Tan is the author of what became read more

My mother would say it is literally ghost writers
who come to me
(Tan is the author of what became The Joy Luck Club).

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to read more

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.

The first duty of a lecturer--to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up read more

The first duty of a lecturer--to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantlepiece forever.

Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind.
[Lat., Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam.]

Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind.
[Lat., Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam.]

If you be a lover of instruction, you will be well instructed.

If you be a lover of instruction, you will be well instructed.