Michael Smith
English Department
Conal Hall, Room 204

Click below for this week's schedule:
Schedule for the Week of 5/20/13 to 5/24/13.doc

Teaching Schedule
    Block B:  English 2, Honors
    Block C:  English 1, Level 1
    Block D:  English 1, Level 1
    Block F:  English 2, Honors
    Block G:  English 2, Level 2 
    
Extra Help
    any day after school

Contact Information
    Phone:  508-842-8934, ext. 553
    E-mail:  msmith@stjohnshigh.org


Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpracticed by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.
                                -Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare (1765)

Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.
                                -Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

...books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.  
                                -John Milton, Areopagitica

If I can read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry.  If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry.  
                                -Emily Dickinson

Poetry it is which, without effort, moves heaven and earth, and stirs to pity the invisible demons and gods; which makes sweet the ties between men and women; and which can comfort the hearts of fierce warriors.  
                                -Ki no Tsurayuki, Kokinshu

The best books are those whose readers feel that they have been written about themselves.
                                -Blaise Pascal, The Art of Persuasion