C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Learning
Learning is better worth than house or land.
Learning makes a man fit company for himself.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye.
To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.
Men learn while they teach.
Out of too much learning become mad.
O this learning, what a thing it is!
Each day is the scholar of yesterday.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.
Learning, to be of much use, must have a tendency to spread itself among the common people.
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
If you want learning, you must work for it.
The great art to learn much is to undertake a little at a time.
Learning passes for wisdom among those who want both.
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.
The three foundations of learning: Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much.
We should ask not who is the most learned, but who is the best learned.
He who has no inclination to learn more, will be very apt to think that he knows enough.
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself, and where we are our learning likewise is.
The learning and knowledge that we have is at the most but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
He who learns and makes no use of his learning, is a beast of burden, with a load of books. Comprehendeth the ass whether he carries on his back a library or a bundle of fagots?
Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.
For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Many persons, after they become learned cease to be good; all other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and good nature.
The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him, and to imitate Him, as we may the nearest, by possessing our souls of true virtue.
He that wants good sense is unhappy in having learning, for he has thereby only more ways of exposing himself; and he that has sense, knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
The Chinese, whom it might be well to disparage less and imitate more, seem almost the only people among whom learning and merit have the ascendency, and wealth is not the standard of estimation.
The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstruction in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.
It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone: learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use.
Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile; then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced; and lastly his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
He that would thoroughly accomplish himself for the government of human affairs, should have a wisdom that can look forward into things that are present, and a learning that can look back into things that are past.***Wisdom, however, and learning, should go hand in hand, they are so beautifully qualified for mutual assistance. But it is better to have wisdom without learning, than learning without wisdom; just as it is better to be rich without being the possessor of a mine, than to be the possessor of a mine without being rich.