I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

我相信一名好老師就是一名偉大的藝術家，而且相信好的老師和偉大的藝術家一樣難得。教書也許是一門最偉大的藝術，因為它的媒體是人的大腦和靈魂。

I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she brought discovery.

我特別要說一說我的第一位老師，她教會我們其他知識，也教會我們如何探求知識。

She aroused us to shouting, bookwaving discussions. She had the noisiest class in school and she didn’t even seem to know it. We could never stick to the subject. She breathed curiosity into us so that we brought in facts or truths shielded in our hands like captured fireflies.

她讓我們大聲討論，揮舞著書本。她的課堂是全校最亂的課堂，而她對此卻好像全然不知。我們從不會拘泥于一個科目上。她培養我們的好奇心，讓我們自己去發現事實和真理，把它們攥在手中，像被捕捉的螢火蟲一樣。

She was fired and perhaps rightly so, for failing to teach fundamentals. Such things must be learned. But she left a passion in us for the pure knowable world and she inflamed me with a curiosity which has never left. I could not do simple arithmetic but through her I sensed that abstract mathematics was very much like music.

她因未能教授我們基礎知識而被解雇了，或許這理由很正當，因為這些知識一定要學。但是她給我們留下了對純粹的可知世界的熱情;她燃起我求知的熱情，這種熱情前所未有。我雖然不會計算簡單的算術題，但是通過她，我感到抽象的數學與音樂非常地相似。

When she was relieved, a sadness came over us but the light did not go out. She left her signature on us, the literature of the teacher who writes on minds. I suppose that to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of the high school teacher. What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person.

當她被解聘時，我們都很難過，但是那片光明并沒有消失。她給我們留下她的簽名，那是老師寫在我們心中的作品。我想在很大程度上，我正是那位中學老師未經簽名的手稿。這樣一個人擁有多么永恒的力量啊。

I can tell my son who looks forward with horror to fifteen years of drudgery that somewhere in the dusty dark a magic may happen that will light up the years... if he is very lucky.

我可以告訴我那恐懼地等待15年寒窗之苦的兒子，如果他非常幸運的話，在一片混沌黑暗中，也許會有神奇的事情發生，使他的學生時代一片光明。