38 verified quotes from 30 writers, c. 475 BC to 1916.
Quotes 1 to 19 of 38, page 1 of 2.
These quotes treat learning as something done on purpose: reading, conversation, travel, mistakes. Bacon says reading makes a full man, conference a ready one and writing an exact one; Franklin spent his pocket money on books as a boy; Frederick Douglass describes the moment he understood that reading was the pathway from slavery to freedom.
Twain argues travel is fatal to prejudice, Sherlock Holmes warns against theorising before one has data, and Kipling lists his six honest serving-men, What, Where, When, How, Why and Who. Every quote below was found word for word in the full text of the public-domain edition we link.
What “verified” means, and what we leave out: How we verify.
Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?
Our note: The opening words of the Analects, the sayings of Confucius gathered by his followers.
Verified in the full text of The Analects on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3330
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it;—this is knowledge
Our note: Confucius to his disciple Zilu (Yu), on what knowing really means.
Verified in the full text of The Analects on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3330
But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor.
Our note: Aristotle on the one skill in writing that cannot be taught by others.
Verified in the full text of Poetics on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1974
If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish with respect to externals.
Our note: Epictetus on the price of progress: caring less about how you look to others.
Verified in the full text of The Encheiridion on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #10661 · Collected in A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
Accustom thyself to attend carefully to what is said by another, and as much as it is possible, be in the speaker's mind.
Our note: Book VI, on really listening.
Verified in the full text of Meditations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #15877 · Collected in The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity?
Our note: On clever talk that has no humility behind it.
Verified in the full text of The Imitation of Christ on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1653
There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge
Our note: The opening of one of Montaigne's last essays.
Verified in the full text of Of Experience on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3600 · Collected in Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Our note: From Bacon's short essay on the uses of study.
Verified in the full text of Of Studies on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #575 · Collected in Essays
Painted the same decade: Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer, Peter Paul Rubens, 1597
For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it
Our note: From the first paragraph of the Discourse.
Verified in the full text of Discourse on the Method on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #59
Painted the same decade: Queen Henrietta Maria, Anthony van Dyck, 1636
…knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.
Our note: From the same talk about the flying machine.
Verified in the full text of The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #652
Painted the same decade: Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772), François Hubert Drouais, 1757
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it
Our note: Johnson, looking over the backs of books in a friend's library.
Verified in the full text of The Life of Samuel Johnson on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1564 · Collected in Life of Johnson
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.
Our note: Franklin remembers his boyhood in Boston.
Verified in the full text of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #148
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience
Our note: From her case for educating girls as seriously as boys.
Verified in the full text of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3420
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
Our note: A verse urging the reader to put down books and learn from a walk in spring woods.
Verified in the full text of The Tables Turned on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #8905 · Collected in Lyrical Ballads
Painted the same decade: Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1747–1800), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), 1792
The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember
Our note: Victor on the joy of asking questions that marked his boyhood.
Verified in the full text of Frankenstein on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #84
Painted the same decade: Waterfall at Mont-Dore, Achille-Etna Michallon, 1818
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
Our note: Victor warns Walton, near the end of his story.
Verified in the full text of Frankenstein on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #84
Painted the same decade: General Étienne-Maurice Gérard (1773–1852), Jacques Louis David, 1816
From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.
Our note: Douglass realises, after his enslaver forbids his reading lessons, that learning to read is the way to freedom.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.
Our note: Douglass on how reading opened his eyes to his condition before he saw a way out of it.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street.
Our note: How Douglass taught himself to read in Baltimore, trading bread for lessons.
Verified in the full text of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #23
Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
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