Quotes About Learning

Cesarini had suffered poverty in his student days. He had been forced to copy out his own textbooks because he could not afford to buy them and, when he served as tutor to the sons of a wealthy family, had collected the stubs of candles after their splendid banquets in order to prolong his studies into the evening—for the acquisition of knowledge in those days required not just books but also a good supply of candles to read by.

Seneca the Younger, who condemned collectors for caring more about the outsides of books than their contents, and for using books "not as the tools of learning, but as decorations for the dining-room." Petrarch had likewise criticized collectors who hoarded manuscripts as ornaments for their homes. "There are those who decorate their rooms with furniture devised to decorate their minds," he sniffed, "and they use books as they use Corinthian vases." 36

He quoted Saint Jerome's praise that learned men were like stars in the heavens, and the prophet Daniel's that they shine like the sun. "All evil is born from ignorance," he wrote. "Yet writers have illuminated the world, chasing away the darkness, especially those authors from ancient times."35

That one of history's greatest brains struggled with amo, amas, amat should be consolation to anyone who has ever tried to learn a second language.

The soft throb and glow roused in my breast by the gilt letters of four or five different languages winking at me from scores of handsomely tooled bindings—the sight of so much knowledge so beautifully presented—swiftly flamed out.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial.

only if the past is understood can the future be navigated

Now you know: these skills don't come naturally to all children. We tend to think that all children are created equal in these capacities, and this assumption causes many adults to believe that behaviorally challenging children must not want to do well. Now you know better.

Your child is lacking skills, not motivation.

behaviors simply indicate that your child is having difficulty meeting certain expectations

Approach a trip as a chance to collect unique experiences, not passport stamps, postcards and snapshots in front of famous monuments.

To be the student of a teacher was to commit yourself to living in the same atmosphere and breathing the same air; there was nothing intermittent about it. Being

T. S. Eliot, faced with the glib modern claim that 'we know so much more than our ancestors', riposted, 'Yes; and they are what we know.

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom: knowledge is information; wisdom is knowing how to use it.

Consider living to be a great adventure. Be interested in the possibilities of learning, doing, and accomplishing. Enthusiasm is evidence of your appreciation for life and living. Apathy and disinterest indicate an inclination toward death.

Culture is partly made out of information. There are at least two main types of this information. One is a set of shared beliefs and values. The other is shared knowledge of how to do things. Culture consists of both.

Write or nothing. It's the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else. The rest comes of itself.

Girls' superior self-control is probably one reason they get better grades in school than boys do.

There's nothing wrong with a toddler having a tantrum. It's natural. It's our job to teach them other ways to deal with it.

Five minutes in an old book quickly reveals that most of what is being sold today as new insights into human behavior is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we have had for centuries.

Small thoughts fit easily into a closed mind, but big thoughts require an open one.

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.