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Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.

— Seneca the Younger

Quemadmodum omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque intemperantia laboramus: non vitae sed scholae discimus.

Original text (Latin)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Line 12

Variants

Not for life, but for school do we learn. (translator unknown) || We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. (translator unknown).

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More quotes by Seneca the Younger

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.

Fortune is less severe against those of lesser degree, and God strikes what is weak with less power.

Nature has given us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself.

All Seneca the Younger quotes →

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

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It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Seneca the Younger (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.