There is four hundred times as much learning in the world as there is wisdom. JOSH BILLINGS. A fool can ask more questions in an hour than seven wise men can answer in a year. Old Saying. Mediocre minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding. ROCHEFOUCAULD. To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge. DISRAELI, Sybil. Bk. I, ch. v. Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds. EMERSON, Letters and Social Aims. To discuss an opinion with a fool is like carrying a lantern before a blind man. DE GASTON. Every kind of persecution for opinions is incompatible with sound philosophy. COLTON, Lacon. Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt. WALTON, Complete Angler. Preface. A philosopher is a fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead. D'ALEMBERT. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. THOREAU, Yankee in Canada. Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom. COLTON, Lacon. Reflection increases the vigour of the mind, as exercise does the strength of the body. LÉVIS. A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop. MACAULAY (About Brougham), Life and Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. CONFUCIUS, Analects. Bk. II, ch. xv. This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. GOLDSMITH, The Good-Natured Man. Act i. Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty. WEBSTER, Address at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1843. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet. i, 5, 1. 166. The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson. 1778. Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve. FROUDE, Short Studies on Great Subjects. For I do not distinguish them by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man. SENECA, Of a Happy Life. Ch. i. Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. WEBSTER, Bunker Hill Monument Address. 1825. Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it. COLTON, Lacon, Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits. VOLTAIRE. The astronomer thinks of the stars, the naturalist of nature, the philosopher of himself. FONTENELLE. Philosophy writes treatises on old age and friendship; Nature makes those on youth and love. D'ALEMBERT. He who creates a desire to learn in a child, does more than he who forces it to learn much. ANON. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school. King Henry VI. Pt. II, iv, 7. The riches of scholarship and the benignities of literature defy fortune and outlive calamity. LOWELL, Books and Libraries. Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it. ROCHEFOUCAULD, Maxims. Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another. ADDISON, The Guardian. Let. of Alexander, No. 111. For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself. BACON, Advancement of Learning. Bk. I. The teacher who can give his pupils pleasure in their work shall be crowned with laurels. HUBBARD, Philistine. I am no believer in the theory of education which undervalues the separate items that make it up. DOANE, St. Agnes Addresses. 1885. Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves, as Souls only understand Souls. WHITMAN, Children of Adam. I shall detain you no longer . . . I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble education. MILTON, Tractate of Education. It is not the passing through these learnings that hurts us, but the dwelling and sticking about them. BEN JONSON, Discoveries. A child becomes for his parents, according to the education he receives, a blessing or a chastisement. So much one man can do, That does both act and know. J. PETIT-SENN. MARVELL, On Cromwell's Return from Ireland. And he is oft the wisest man, Who is not wise at all. WORDSWORTH, Oak and the Broom. He never says a foolish thing, Nor ever does a wise one. EARL OF ROCHESTER, On Charles II's. Earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights bedchamber door. Love's Labour's Lost. i, 1. Stuff the head With all such reading as was never read. POPE, The Dunciad. Bk. IV, 1. 247. Full oft we see Cold Wisdom waiting on superfluous Folly. All's Well that Ends Well. i, 1, 1. 115. Institute A course of learning and ingenious studies. Taming of the Shrew. i, 1. Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. HOLMES, Poet at Breakfast Table. V. Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson. 1775. Greece, so much praised for her wisdom, never produced but seven wise men judge of the number of fools! GRÉCOURT. |