Learning Quotes
A short list with no flagged entries. Shakespeare, John Gay, Goldsmith, Pope and Bacon each have a few. Bacon’s Meditationes Sacræ (1597) is the best-known: reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Samuel Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) urges the reader to pause a while from learning to be wise. Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary (1911) defines learning as the kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
For more on teaching and schools, see Education.
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by Algebra.
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around.
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all it knew.
Walkers at leisure learning's flowers may spoil
Nor watch the wasting of the midnight oil.
I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning.
Learn from the past. Or repeat its horrors, in imagination, endlessly.
He [Temple] was a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world.
No man is the wiser for his Learning * * * Wit and Wisdom are born with a man.
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself
And where we are our learning likewise is.
Learning by study must be won;
'Twas ne'er entail'd from son to son.