Quotes About Learning

Never let school interfere with your education

Thankfully, though, personalities are not born ugly; they are learned ugly

If You don't read good books, then you are no better than an unlettered Man

My parents were told by the principal of West Barnstable Elementary School and my teacher that I was a bright boy whose spelling was in the retarded range and whose handwriting was the worst they'd ever seen. I find it embarrassing that I spell so badly. I will do almost anything to avoid being embarrassed, but no effort either on my part or on the part of any teacher has ever dented my utter bafflement when it comes to choosing which letters to put down, how many, and in what order.

It's probably possible to gain humility by means other than repeated humiliation, but repeated humiliation works very well.

At meetings I've heard people say proudly that they have no original thoughts, that everything they say they learned in meetings or from reading the Big Book. Wouldn't that be nice? I have so many original thoughts I have to take medication for it.

Being a good conversationalist is really what a liberal arts education is all about.

I must read. I must read. I must read.

Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.

If not, let me offer you some instruction in at least one area: get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there.

get thee to a dictionary and be relentless about your visits there. p. 591

Les gens veulent toujours des experts, mais parfois ils ont la chance de tomber sur un débutant.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I'll never drink champagne. No one can play like you. -Liesel

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.

Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.

Say something enough times and you never forget it.

I was always reading books when I should have been doing math and the rest of it.

Did you learn? The face in the corner watched the flames. I did. There was a considerable pause. Until I was nine. At that age, my mother sold the music studio and stopped teaching. SHe kept only the one instrument but gave up on me not long after I resisted the learning. I was foolish. No, Papa said. You were a boy.

Papa would say a word and the girl would have to spell it aloud and then paint it on the wall, as long as she got it right. After a month, the wall was recoated. A fresh cement page.

Once, words had rendered Liesel useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor's wife at her husband's desk, she felt an innate sense of power. It happened every time she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence.

School, as you might imagine, was a terrific failure. Although

politics. Later, they read some more in bed, adhering to the tradition of circling the words she didn't know and

Elle, la voleuse de livres dépourvue de mots. Mais croyez-moi, les mots allaient venir et, lorsqu'ils arriveraient, Liesel les prendrait dans sa main, comme les nuages, et elle en exprimerait la substance, comme la pluie.