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Quotes about learning

38 verified quotes from 30 writers, c. 475 BC to 1916.

Quotes 20 to 38 of 38, page 2 of 2.

Continued from page 1, which has our introduction. Still oldest first.

  1. …suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.

    Estella, in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1861

    Our note: Estella to Pip at their meeting near the end of the novel.

    Verified in the full text of Great Expectations on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1400

    Painted the same decade: The Calm Sea, Gustave Courbet, 1869

  2. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

    Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1869

    Our note: From the conclusion of Twain's account of a long voyage to Europe and the Holy Land.

    Verified in the full text of The Innocents Abroad on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #3176

    Painted the same decade: The Laundress, Honoré Daumier, 186[3?]

  3. I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose

    Sherlock Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

    Our note: Holmes explaining to Watson, in their first adventure, why he ignores most facts.

    Verified in the full text of A Study in Scarlet on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #244

    Painted the same decade: Shoes, Vincent van Gogh, 1888

  4. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

    Sherlock Holmes, in A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

    Our note: Holmes to Watson as a new case begins.

    Verified in the full text of A Scandal in Bohemia on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1661 · Collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

    Painted the same decade: The Englishman (William Tom Warrener, 1861–1934) at the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892

  5. I Keep six honest serving-men: (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.

    Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories, 1902

    Our note: From the poem after "The Elephant's Child," the story of a very curious young elephant.

    Verified in the full text of Just So Stories on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2781

  6. …who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions

    Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child, 1902

    Our note: How the story introduces its young hero, whose questions get him into trouble and, in the end, a trunk.

    Verified in the full text of The Elephant's Child on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2781 · Collected in Just So Stories

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