Elementary Graduation Quotes

My good friends, we are all waiting. We are waiting, if not for the Messiah, as such, we are waiting for the messianic moment. And the messianic moment is what each and every one of us tries to build, meaning a certain area of humanity that links us to all those who are human and, therefore, desperately trying to fight despair as humanly as possible and-I hope-with some measure of success. ~ Elie Wiesel

To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without - our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them - the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain by every ray of light and sound - processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group them - a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flame-like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces p ~ Walter Pater

I have long since learned, as a measure of elementary hygiene, to be on guard when anyone quotes Pascal. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri. ~ Dan Simmons

I've learned that I can pretty much do anything I've wanted to as long as I was methodical and diligent about it. It may not sound very exciting really, but it works. ~ Jamie Hyneman

When I was in elementary school, we had the kid who threw chairs, the kid who stuttered, and the kid who went to the bathroom on himself ... but we never had the kid who came in one day and started shooting everyone. ~ Bill Simmons

Everyone's been to school. Some schools are good but some are not. Waning Elementary School is probably the worst of them all. You might recognise some bits of your school in Waning E.S. Not all schools are perfect! ~ Chris O'Donoghue

I was born in 1943 and raised in the Bronx, in a high rise apartment complex known as Parkchester, the only child of Max, an accountant who worked in the garment district in Manhattan, and Rose, an elementary school teacher. ~ Robert Lefkowitz

You're the most important person in my life," I whispered. "You're the only man I ever let in."
"But I'm not in, Stace. I'm standing on the porch in the pouring rain, waiting for you to open the door. I've been waiting ever since you left after graduation, ever since you came back last year. Even now, you've let me into your bed, but not into your heart. I'm still waiting. ~ Barbra Annino

Extroverts get better grades than introverts during elementary school, but introverts outperform extroverts in high school and college. ~ Susan Cain

Furthermore, they must learn not to make the elementary mistake of assuming that because a word contains a negative suffix or prefix it is necessarily a negative word. In-, for instance, almost always implies negation but not with invaluable, while -less is equally negative, as a rule, but not with priceless. ~ Bill Bryson

Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left. ~ Mina V. Esguerra

If you're picking your best friend based on what kind of clothes she wears or how popular she is, chances are you aren't going to stay in touch after graduation. ~ Renee Olstead

With success, if you don't plan and just take each day as it comes, there will come failure. ~ Auliq Ice

For everyone who never smiled in school
photos, for all who've wandered city streets
not knowing the where they were
or feeling alone, I've packed kindness. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon

Benefits of Improv To the Editor: Re "Inmate Improv," by Anna Clark (Op-Ed, Dec. 31): It was not surprising to me that an improvisational theater workshop would help a prison inmate adjust to life after his release. Pretend play has been shown to improve the executive-function skills in preschool and school-age children. These skills include the ability to control emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exercise self-control and discipline. As poor executive-function skills are associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime, it would behoove all adults involved in child-rearing to encourage role-playing or "improv." STEVEN ROSENBERG Fairfield, Conn., Dec. 31, 2014 The writer is director of the Elementary Reading Program at the University of Bridgeport School of Education. ~ Anonymous

As with most voluntary school integration programs, dispersal of the black children was the norm. In Portland, no more than forty-five black children were bused to any single elementary school, and white schools of four-hundred to five-hundred pupils received as few as four and in most instances only ten to fifteen black students. Brush Elementary, the all-white school Rist selected for daily observation, received about thirty black children.
The principal, along with most of his all-white teaching staff, had never taught a black child. He hired a black school aide because he felt that most of the white students had never spoken to a black person. His lack of racial sensitivity was illustrated in a staff discussion about the collection of milk money, when he said, "I guess we had better not call it chocolate milk any longer. It would probably now be more appropriate to refer to it as black milk. ~ Derrick A. Bell

[On the propulsive force of rockets] One part of fire takes up as much space as ten parts of air, and one part of air takes up the space of ten parts of water, and one part of water as much as ten parts of earth. Now powder is earth, consisting of the four elementary principles, and when the sulfur conducts the fire into the dryest part of the powder, fire, and air increase ... the other elements also gird themselves for battle with each other and the rage of battle is changed by their heat and moisture into a strong wind. ~ Vannoccio Biringuccio

Among all of the mathematical disciplines the theory of differential equations is the most important ... It furnishes the explanation of all those elementary manifestations of nature which involve time. ~ Sophus Lie

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: 'Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree.' I want to thank Harvard for this honor. I'll be changing my job next year and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume! ~ Bill Gates

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated. ~ Garry Trudeau

Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother, he said." Once I've spoken this, put this thought into concrete words, a hollow feeling grabs hold of me. And inside that hollow, my heart pounds out a vacant, metallic rhythm. Expression unchanged, Oshima gazes at me for a long time. "So he said that someday you would kill your father with your own hands, that you would sleep with your mother." I nod a few more times. "The same prophecy made about Oedipus. Though of course you knew that." I nod. "But that's not all. There's an extra ingredient he threw into the mix. I have a sister six years older than me, and my father said I would sleep with her, too." "Your father actually said this to you?" "Yeah. I was still in elementary school then, and didn't know what he meant by 'be with.' It was only a few years later that I caught on." Oshima doesn't say anything. "My father told me there was nothing I could do to escape this fate. That prophecy is like a timing device buried inside my genes, and nothing can ever change it. I will kill my father and be with my mother and sister. ~ Haruki Murakami

Some key physical entities such as empty space, elementary particles and the wavefunction appear to be purely mathematical int he sense that their only intrinsic properties are mathematical properties. ~ Max Tegmark

Use your knowledge, and your heart, to stand up for those who can't stand, speak for those who can't speak, be a beacon of light for those whose lives have become dark. ~ Julie Andrews

Times like this were special. Memory builders. When something extraordinary happened to a person the
kind of things remembered forever after it didn't have to be a life-changing event like a graduation or
marriage or birth of a child. It more often was the small things. The sheer joy of summer sunlight on a
fragrant flower. The giggle of a toddler. The brush of a lover's fingertips. And the person marks the
moment with the flashing insight thinking ... This is special. I should remember this ~ Sandra Hill

My mom dressed me in silk to go to elementary school. In kindergarten, they sent me home because I couldn't do finger painting in my dress. ~ Allegra Versace

Elementary, my dear Watson."
"That's a misquotation, by the way," I countered without thinking. Which might've made more of an impact if I'd stopped grinning like a cretin.
"See? Ten minutes and you already know I read Sherlock Holmes. Just imagine what you could discover if we went out on a real date. ~ Ramona Wray

My final coaching point of the day: It's my contention that in any given moment one lives one's life in one of two ways, either under a threat or for a challenge. In performing when it counts, it's one or the other, under a threat or for a challenge. If, as Einstein says, "Imagination will take you everywhere," then living your life under a threat will take you nowhere. ~ Jim Steen

On the hot, fragrant afternoon of my graduation from college it seemed that good fortune was not merely latent but unavoidable, folded and in the bag. ~ Geoffrey Wolff

AI won't be fool proof in the future since it will only as good as the data and information that we give it to learn. It could be the case that simple elementary tricks could fool the AI algorithm and it may serve a complete waste of output as a result. ~ Zoltan Andrejkovics

I always use my clients' products. This is not toady-ism, but elementary good manners. ~ David Ogilvy

Beautiful features, always immaculately dressed, the kind of woman that makes a great impression. Their hair is always nicely curled. They major in French literature at expensive private women's colleges, and after graduation find jobs as receptionists or secretaries. They work for a few years, visit Paris for shopping once a year with their girlfriends. They finally catch the eye of a promising young man in the company, or else are formally introduced to one, and quit work to get married. They then devote themselves to getting their children into famous private schools. As he sat there, Tsukuru pondered the kind of lives they led. ~ Haruki Murakami

At the School of Visual Arts in New York, you can get your degree in Net art, which is really a fantastic way of thinking of theater in new ways. ~ Laurie Anderson

My parents were told by the principal of West Barnstable Elementary School and my teacher that I was a bright boy whose spelling was in the retarded range and whose handwriting was the worst they'd ever seen. I find it embarrassing that I spell so badly. I will do almost anything to avoid being embarrassed, but no effort either on my part or on the part of any teacher has ever dented my utter bafflement when it comes to choosing which letters to put down, how many, and in what order. ~ Mark Vonnegut

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once. ~ Virginia Woolf

Still, I could tell he and Gayle were trying. She baked a cake. Not as good as yours, though."
"What kind of cake?" I ask.
"Devil's food cake. Kind of dry." Peter hesitates before he says, "I invited him to graduation."
"You did?" My heart swells.
"He kept asking about school, and…I don't know. I thought about what you said, and I just did it." He shrugs, like he doesn't care much either way if his dad's there or not. It's an act. Peter cares. Of course he cares. "So you'll meet him then."
I snuggle closer to him. "I'm so proud of you, Peter."
He gives a little laugh. "For what?"
"For giving your dad a chance even though he doesn't deserve it." I look up at him and say, "You're a nice boy, Peter K.," and the smile that breaks across his face makes me love him even more. ~ Jenny Han

A relentless focus on the outward markers of success can lead to complacency. It can make you lazy. ~ Barack Obama

A month before graduation I got an off-Broadway job. Then I did some commercials, including one for MCI. You can only see half of me, but it paid well. Thank God for commercials. ~ Lee Pace

It's great because all of my friends from elementary school are still my closest friends. ~ Gia Coppola

Most Americans - professing Christians - for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply "where people are these days." Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren't interested in learning it. ~ Michael S. Horton

I do believe our culture is doing a bad job raising boys. The evidence is in the shocking violence of Paducah, Jonesboro, Cheyenne, and Edinboro. It's in our overcrowded prisons and domestic violence shelters. It's in our Ritalin-controlled elementary schools and alcohol-soaked college campuses. ~ Mary Pipher

In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking. ~ Ted Nelson

Don't work for fools. It's not worth it. Getting paid less to work for people you like and believe in is much better for you (and your career) in the long run. ~ Adam Savage