Quotes About Learning

The true art of memory, is the art of attention

When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry.

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

There is no matter what children should learn first, any more than what leg you should put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the meantime your backside is bare. Sire, while you stand considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learn't 'em both.

Every man, who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward.

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity

Volumes have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives and untimely deaths. To these mournful narratives I am about to add the Life of Richard Savage...

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

ACROAMATICAL  (ACROAMA'TICAL)   adj.[   Gr. I bear.]Of or pertaining to deep learning; the opposite of exoterical.

The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?

All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not.

Sir," said Imlac, "my history will not be long: the life that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very little diversified by events.

The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical.

Indeed Johnson was very sensible how much he owed to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told Mr. Langton, that while Hunter was flogging his boys unmercifully, he used to say, 'And this I do to save you from the gallows.

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.

He that adopts the sentiments of another whom he has reason to believe wiser than himself is only to be blamed when he claims the honours which are not due but to the author, and endeavours to deceive the world into praise and veneration; for to learn is the proper business of youth; and whether we increase our knowledge by books, or by conversation, we are equally indebted to foreign assistance.

It were to be wished that they who devote their lives to study would at once believe nothing too great for their attainment, and consider nothing as too little for their regard

Nothing has so much exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves.

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.

He that has collected his knowledge in solitude must learn its application by mixing with mankind.

It is too well known, that the second George never was an Augustus to learning or genius.

He discovered a great ambition to excel, which roused him to counteract his indolence. He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read. Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he repeated verbatim, varying only one epithet, by which he improved the line.

Judgement, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book.