School Days Quotes

Quotes

Everything that childhood holds of joy, happiness, true exaltation, radiant pleasure, delight, euphoria, serenity, milky ecstasy, blessed peace, beatific innocence was, at one time or another, pounded to powder by the hatched of a bawoulf

Narrator

Children were afraid of bawoulfeurs, or bullies who tortured other children. They cried "bawoulf" before snatching up their spoils and scattering “like a swarm of hornets” leaving their victims uncertain which marauder they should chase. There was pushing, and trampling, and choking. And no one wanted to give up and be soaked in shame. After such raids no one wanted to keep playing because they were completely dispirited and the play was suspended until the next day. Children lived in a fear that every moment the worst is going to happen and “between a Bawoulf! and the wretched realization that you were ruined, there often was just a speck of a second”.

The bottom line: the story is a lie only if you tell it badly

Narrator

The little boy was so busy playing games after school that he started to go back late home. It wasn’t a big deal for him bit it was for his mother. He had to explain his delay and for the first few times he invented some fibs, like the Teacher had talked longer today or that he had to stay to clean the blackboard, but his mother didn’t believe him anymore. Thus, he started to create long stories and excuses for his mother to believe him. All he had to do is to “give his imagination enough of a workout to excite her admiration”. And he get the truth – the lie should be creative and told good if you want people believe you.

Mathematical confirmation: from nothing can only come nothing. You, beggar, your mind is as empty as your slate.

The Teacher

When the Teacher asks question, students write their answers with the piece of chalk on their slates. When the answer is right, the Teacher usually says “Well done, my friend”, and there is no better praise in the whole world. The incorrect answer was unpleasant but there was even worse thing – the empty slate. It drove the Teacher crazy; he stood over the poor student, pretending to read carefully as if there was written something he admires and then he said with sarcastic tone: “Would you be so kind, you vandal, as to repeat out loud for me the answer you have put forward for our consideration?”. It was so humiliating that the empty slate came to be seen as the worst thing possible.

The superior races have, with regard to the primitive races, the right and the duty of civilization.

the Teacher

The teacher always emphasized that the Europeans were founders of history; the world began with them. The islands were Creoles live had been “veiled in a fog of nonexistence, crossed by phantom Caribs or Arawaks themselves lost in the obscurity of a cannibal nonhistory”. And then when Europeans came, they brought the light, civilization, history and humanization. They brought countless amounts of important things, and God knows, what could happen with this barbarian people if Europeans didn’t discover them. Children believed every word from the Teacher. They glorified the progress of civilization, they hated their supposedly vulgar culture, and were thankful for the opportunity to study.

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