Marva's Quotes

#1. Miss Marva's driving technique was at best creative, and at worst she was an accident waiting to happen.

Lisa Kleypas

#2. What are their names? Psycho and Killer?"
He shook his head. "Cupcake and Twinkie."
My mouth dropped open. "You're kidding."
A grin flitted across his lips. "Afraid not."
If naming them after dessert snacks had been Miss Marva's attempt to make them seem cute, it wasn't working.

Lisa Kleypas

#3. Death cannot put the brakes on a good dream.

Marva Collins

#4. If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

Marva Collins

#5. Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.

Marva Collins

#6. I cannot change the world, but I do not have to conform.

Marva Collins

#7. Praise is essential in developing the right attitude toward learning and toward school.

Marva Collins

#8. I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.

Marva Collins

#9. There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.

Marva Collins

#10. Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.

Marva Collins

#11. What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.

Marva Collins

#12. The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats and dogs.

Marva Collins

#13. I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.

Marva Collins

#14. Before I can effectively discipline students, I have to earn their friendship and respect.

Marva Collins

#15. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior.

Marva Collins

#16. If believers worship with gladness and passion, anyone not yet a part of the community certainly will be attracted to the One who is the object of their worship.

Marva Dawn

#17. Readers are leaders. Thinkers succeed.

Marva Collins

#18. When someone is taught the joy of learning, it becomes a life-long process that never stops, a process that creates a logical individual. That is the challenge and joy of teaching.

Marva Collins

#19. Every other religion gives you directions on how to find God, but Jesus takes you to Him.

Marva Dawn

#20. If the Christ we follow sent out his disciples with no extra possessions (Luke 9:1-6 and 10:1-12) and warned would-be devotees that he had nowhere to lay his head (see Luke 9:57-62), then we must recognize that it is extremely difficult to live in a Christian way in a consumer culture.

Marva Dawn

#21. None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success.

Marva Collins

#22. Let us make sure that the worship services we plan and conduct present that Truth in all its clarity and beauty and goodness.

Marva Dawn

#23. A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us - not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.

Marva J. Dawn

#24. There isn't a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment

Marva Collins

#25. Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn't-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been.

Marva Collins

#26. You can pay people to teach, But you can't pay them to care.

Marva Collins

#27. We are to be lights in the world. It is God's business to light us, to set us on the lampstand, and to bring the people into the house. Our only duty is to shine forth with the gospel.

Marva J. Dawn

#28. Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.

Marva Collins

#29. Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

Marva Collins

#30. Without the emotion and willingness of Spirit, our music becomes dry and dusty - without life. Without doctrinal bones as a skeleton, the Body is not enfleshed in a healthy way.

Marva Dawn

#31. Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

Marva Collins

#32. I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

Marva Collins

#33. Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Marva Collins

#34. The Christian life consists in what God does for us, not what we do for God.

Marva Dawn

#35. Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.

Marva Collins

#36. An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.

Marva Collins

#37. Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

Marva Collins

#38. Instead of scrambling for security in national victory and domination, in preparation for war and military aggression, we must relearn the values of cooperation and sharing, of nonviolence and support.

Marva Dawn

#39. Until kids decide, 'I am a miracle. I am unique. There is no one else exactly like me,' they can never draw the conclusion, 'Because I'm a miracle, I will never harm another person who's a miracle like me.' In this slippery world, they all need something to hang on to.

Marva Collins

#40. Everything works when the teacher works. It's as easy as that, and as hard.

Marva Collins

#41. I spent years being angry with God because He never gave me the husband I wanted. All those years gone, wasted! I should have enjoyed each day as it came and recognized that if I remained single it was because God knew singleness was best for me.

Jill Stengl