Quotes About Learning

The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education.

Many time the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Knowledge is the only elegance.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

The scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Men should take their knowledge from the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Maturity is a result of learning from success and from mistakes—in other words, learning from experience.