LXXX. TEACHER
Orphic Sayings
Context: The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excellence and revelations of beauty, which he has neither impersonated in character, nor embodied in words. His life and teachings are but studies for yet nobler ideals.
“A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 43e
The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon http://books.google.com/books?id=Y1wLAAAAYAAJ&q="The+first+duty+of+an+historian+is+to+be+on+his+guard+against+his+own+sympathies+but+he+cannot+wholly+escape+their+influence"&pg=PA19#v=onepage (1891)
Natural ragione è di ciascuno che ci nasce, la sua vita, quanto può, aiutare e conservare e difendere.
First Day, Introduction
The Decameron (c. 1350)
"Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)
Context: We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether his own opinions are the true ones, but whether he is well instructed in those of other people, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly.
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
“A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Brooks Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Misattributed
