College Quotes

Christ, seven years of college, down the drain.

~ John Belushi

Of a sudden he felt that fraternity life was the only way to exist at college. How could he have doubted? (126)

~ Ferrol Sams

Though outwardly Kristina maintained that a clean room was a symptom of a diseased mind (for how could she, while studying the world's greatest thinkers, be bothered with such mundane earthly issues as cleaning?), inwardly she hated untidyness and made a point of spending as little time in the room as possible.

~ Paullina Simons

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing “classical” music; that two, he was doing it “softly”; and that three, “there were not many readers around in summer.” I was there, a one-man multitude.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.

~ Maureen Johnson

I was never educated to be an actor. I went to a regular college. It was a great thing for me because I feel that the main thing to get out of college is a thirst for knowledge. College should teach you how to be curious. Most people think that college is the end of education, but it isn't. The ceremony of giving you the diploma is called commencement. And that means you are fit to commence learning because you have learned hot to learn.

~ Vincent Price

This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep.I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton - and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.

~ Jean Webster

When you're in college you haven't had that much life. Parents, school, assorted youth activities—that's about it.

~ Martha Moody

When I was at the University of California at Berkeley, I went to some classes that must have had more than four hundred students in them. I almost always sat in the far back of the auditorium so I could read the newspaper. I remember that I stayed late one day to ask the professor a question, and when I got up to him, all I could think to myself was, 'So this is what the professor looks like.

~ Stephan Pastis

Enrollments in American colleges tripled between 1955 and 1970, 250% in the Soviet Union, 400% in France, and more than 200% in China by 1965. Gaddis writes, What governments failed to foresee was that more young people, plus, more education, when combined with a stalemated Cold War, could be a prescription for insurrection. Learning does not easily compartmentalize. How do you prepare students to think for purposes approved by the state, or by their parents, without also equipping them to think for themselves? Youths throughout history had often wished question their elders values. Now, with university educations, their elders had handed them the training to do so. The result was discontent with the world as it was.

~ John Gaddis

At Reed College, I learned very quickly that I didn't know nearly enough. I learned, first, that every student there was as smart as I was, and quite a few seemed smarter.

~ John Daniel

It is a well known fact that Abraham Lincoln spent much of his spare time visiting wounded soldiers in Union Army hospitals. I've spent thirty years teaching history at Columbia and I don't think I've spent more than fifteen minutes in the freshman dorm. Are we the ones keeping Lincoln's memory alive? Or are we burying it?

~ Eric Foner

...and often Lisa thought bitterly of the ideas she had held on college life before coming to Denton, ideas and images culled from a hundred magazine stories and as many movies. Where were the convertibles, the secret bottles of liquor, the gay young men and their wild girl friends?

~ Grace Metalious

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

~ Mitch Albom

Yet here was Morrie talking with the wonder of our college years, as if I'd simply been on a long vacation. ..What happened to me? I once promised I would never work for money, that I would join the Peace Corps, that I would live in beautiful, inspirational places.

~ Mitch Albom

I was brand-new in San Francisco, right out of college, and I thought it was thrilling, a guy buying me a drink. I didn’t think, how tacky, this creep is buying me a drink. I thought, how amazing, I put on lipstick and a short skirt and look what can happen.

~ Marcy Dermansky

In almost 25 years of experience as a high school guidance counselor, a regional college representative, and a private college counselor, I have noted the kinds of things that make the college process productive, successful, and enjoyable. I have worked with so many students who have blossomed in part due to their college search and application process. It can be a period of maturation and of self-exploration, with an honest assessment of skills and interests, development of task organization and discipline, renewed intrafamily communication, and travel to interesting cities and small college towns. I firmly believe when the journey to college is fully embraced, it can truly be loved.

~ Jill Madenberg

College stirred in her a certain contempt for virtues like kindness and persistence. She would have appeared to have been a kind and persistent person herself, but a steady diet of Antonioni films and an introductory course on existentialism had awakened her to the fact that she wanted more.

~ Garth Risk Hallberg

And by the way, I know my title said “10 Reasons” and I only listed “6”. I didn’t learn to count in college.

~ James Altucher

some people graduate on time. some others graduate at the right time. no matter about the time you graduations, you have to take responsibility to finish your college when you choose to start it. not for your parents, not for your friends, but for you. when you graduate, you'll be at the higher lever than your life before. remember, you don't have to be smarter, all you have to do is be the work harder than others.

~ Nunki Artura

He's a cocky SOB. He knew the Nick Adams Stories. Probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.

~ Peter Heller

No matter how much you learn in college, it never prepares you for the real world.

~ Donald Allen

Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne, but if you never do, don't grow discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all... college can only help us do it more easily.

~ L.m. Montgomery

It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

~ Marina Keegan

It is a shock to many college graduates that their segway into the real world is one of obligation, profound debt, and countless sacrifices of the soul.

~ Chris Matakas

Harder still was the pretense her studies demanded: the need to dissemble, to parrot her professors' orthodoxies, to feign interest in theories that were of no use to her.

~ John Wray

You sound like a college freshman taking his first philosophy class way too seriously, but that's good.

~ Michael Grant

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

Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.

~ Mary Karr

Bad things are gonna' happen to you, because they happen to us all. And worrying won't stave the really bad things off. Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides. Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.

~ Mary Karr

A university is a city of ideas, and we're grateful you became citizens of our city.

~ Mary Karr

Don't take on more student loans than your future-self can handle.

~ Carol H. Cox

I rub my hand down my face, frustrated. This girl in front of me tests my patience like hell. When she ran to me after her dad kicked her out, I thought she still had feelings for me. She needed a place to stay, and I needed her. I offered her a room, thinking if she was around me every day, she would remember she loves me. I was dead wrong. Somewhere along the way, we switched roles, I became the one who so desperately needed her and she became cold and closed off. She isn’t my savior; she’s my punishment.

~ Brittany Butler

This was one of those non-glamorous parts about college that people never tell you about - worrying that the dilapidated apartment hosting a party would fall apart with you in it.

~ Alyssa Rose Ivy

He's like the anti-Ben, but his attention is like a shot of adrenaline.

~ Jessica Calla

Gee, you don’t sugarcoat things, do you?” “At least if I’m at a club, I won’t have you pressuring me.”“No, you’ll have heaps of strangers instead.

~ Shaye Evans

Colt, you’re going to be a nurse, not a cop. If anything happens, I’ll pay the fines for you.”“Still don’t need it.”“Why?” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Because you’re still trying to get into Daddy’s good books?”“Shut up,” I muttered, blowing my frustrations into another balloon—it grew between my palms. This had nothing to do with my father.“From what you’ve told me of the guy, he’s a jerking dick, Colt. I don’t know why you’re seeking his approval.

~ Shaye Evans

Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.)

~ Rainbow Rowell

He gave her a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “Eh, it wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses.”Hazel made a face. “I’m pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that.

~ Holly Black

Spending $100 million on a fancy gym is completely unremarkable in contemporary American higher education. Yet $10 million for a really good online biology course that could serve millions of students is seen as an outlandish, unaffordable expense.

~ Kevin Carey