Quotes About Knowledge

When house and land are gone and spent, then learning is most excellent.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. —Chinese Proverb

Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discover, and it is a principle even of piety but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it

Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

As the Spanish proverb says, "He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.

Ignorance, madame, pure ignorance.

What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.

When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions.

Greek, sir, is like lace; every man gets as much of it as he can.

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,And pause a while from learning to be wise.There mark what ills the scholar's life assail—Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

There is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all Tom Jones.

As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.