Quotes About Learning

One habit: choosing a book and starting each day with a dedicated time of reading and gazing, becoming an apprentice to a mind I admire.

I never saw the necessity to attend all those classes, so many days a week, or purchase unreadable texts when so much fiction and poetry waited in the bookstore.

Travel is a journey into one's own ignorance.

Tobin, my man, you are going to learn about chickens. And when you to learn about chickens, you will learn about life.

I cannot have a sufficiency of books. Indeed, I have more than I should... Books give utter delight: they talk with us... and are bound to us by lively and witty intimacy, and do not just insinuate themselves alone on their readers but present the names of others, and each one creates a longing for another.

Libri quosdam ad scientiam, quosdam ad insaniam deduxere. (Books have led some to knowledge and some to madness.)

And what good has all your reading done you? Out of all the things you have read, how much has really stayed in your soul, what roots have grown there that will, in a good time, bring forth fruit? Examine your heart carefully. If you compare the whole of what you know with what you don't know, you will find that your knowledge is like a small stream dried up in the summer heat compared to the ocean of your ignorance. And even granted that you do know a lot, what difference does it make?

Nabokov, Heinrich von Kleist, Raymond Carver, Jane Bowles, James Baldwin, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant—the list goes on and on. They are the teachers to whom I go, the authorities I consult, the models that still help to inspire me with the energy and courage it takes to sit down at a desk each day and resume the process of learning, anew, to write.

there were many occasions on which I had to skim as rapidly as I could to get through those survey courses that gave us two weeks to finish Don Quixote, ten days for War and Peace, courses designed to produce college graduates who could say they'd read the classics. By then I knew enough to regret reading those books that way. And I promised myself that I would revisit them as soon as I could give them the time and attention they deserved.

He was never angry when she made mistakes. He complimented and encouraged her. He shared his own mishaps with a sense of humor that made her less annoyed with her own incompetence. He gave her hope that she could learn, and pride when she did.

I was learning to recognize when God was speaking through someone. He repeats himself. He says it over and over because we are so stubborn, stupid and unwilling. And even scared. Even when he tells us not to be afraid, we set our minds about it, worrying and fretting about every little thing. I was shaken by what God expected us to do.

He liked going to the library...

God permits suffering. He permits injustice. I know your father can be cruel and selfish at times. But there were tender moments in the beginning. He lives with bitter disappointment. He's never learned to count his blessings. If you are to rise above your circumstances, you

Studying Latin can teach you how to think analytically.

love the way you take on new things, your drive to learn. I love how you work, how you have this little-girl look on your face when you finish something you've never tried before. I love watching you skip across the meadow with Ruth. I love seeing you laugh with Miriam and hang on Elizabeth's wisdom. I love the whole idea of growing old with you and waking up to you every morning for the rest of my life.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Wonder is the seed of knowledge

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.

Ipsa scientia potestas est. Knowledge itself is power.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.