Quotes About Knowledge

The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

Nowadays, people read too many books to appreciate any.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

That is one of the secrets of life - to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

I wrote when I did not know life; now that I know life, I have no more to say.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

For he to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth century, one must realise every century that has preceded it and that has contributed to its making. To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

The unread is always better than the unreadable.

They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. 

The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose. DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.

It is only intellectually lost who ever argue.

If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

Are you very much in love with him?' he asked. She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. 'I wish I knew' she said at last. He shook his head. -'Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.' --'What is that?' -'Disillusion.

I have known everything, said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his eyes, but I am always ready for a new emotion.

it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't.  More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.