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George Long Quotes
1800–1879 England
George Long (November 4, 1800 – August 10, 1879) was an English classical scholar, historian and translator. Among other works, he translated of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1862), the Discourses of Epictetus (1877), Plutarch's Lives (1844–1848) and was the author of the Decline of the Roman Republic (1864–1874), the Civil Wars of Rome, and the Summary of Herodotus (1829).
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It is an undoubted truth that, if a thing is not learned well, there is more harm done than good acquired.
All education which is in its kind complete and good, is the means of forming character, and of making useful men and women.
He will learn to observe carefully, and not to be deceived, as we sometimes are, by appearances.
I believe that many children in the humblest schools will observe and learn as well as those in other schools.
A man who attempts to debate when he cannot listen must make a wretched display of impotence.
I think it is a truth, and an important truth, that the fundamentals of all school teaching ought to be the same.
Cleanthes also connects Ethic and Politic, or the study of the principles of morals and the study of the constitution of civil society.
We do not draw objects as they are: we draw them as they seem to be.
This power of attention is that which perhaps more than any thing else distinguishes those who do great things from those who can do nothing well.
A few have a great power of listening and attending, but they are only few, and this power gives them a superiority over those who cannot attend.
We must do something to lead boys to look at the wonderful objects by which we are surrounded, and to examine them carefully. I don't think that lectures are of much use.
A prudent governor will not roughly oppose even the superstitions of his people, and though he may wish they were wiser, he will know that he cannot make them so by offending their prejudices.
Every man who observes, must have seen what bad listeners most people are. Inability to attend carefully to what is spoken is a great defect, which leads to blunders, misrepresentation, and sometimes to quarrels.
Great abilities are rare, and they are often accompanied by qualities which make the abilities useless to him who has them, and even injurious to society.
In whatever way you who teach may manage this business, I advise you not to trust too much to the inculcation of creeds and dogmas by words written or spoken.
The doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions.
Even among the earliest Stoics, Logic or Dialectic does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy.
Epictetus and Antoninus have had readers ever since they were first printed. The little book of Antoninus has been the companion of some great men.
The chief business of education... is to attempt to form good habits in children, to improve the understanding, and to check the formation of bad habits.
Real learning... is a thing in which the learner is not a receiver only of words written or spoken: he must be a doer.
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