LEARNING LEARNING
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse.
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.
Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden
down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
Out of too much learning become mad.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater;
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 119.
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by Algebra.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 125.
The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read.
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
Doctrina est ingenii naturale quoddam pabulum.
Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind.
When Honor's sun declines, and Wealth takes
wings,
Then Learning shines, the best of precious
things.
Learning without thought is labor lost;
thought without learning is perilous.
There is the love of knowing without the love
of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.
Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books.
Next these learn'd Jonson in this list I bring
Who had drunk deep of the Pierian Spring.
Consider that I laboured not for myself only,
but for all them that seek learning.
Ecclesiasticus. XXXIII. 17.
Extreirce est dementise discere dediscenda.
It is the worst of madness to learn what has
to be unlearnt.
Erasmus—De Ratione Studii.
There is no other Royal path which leads to
geometry.
Euclid to Ptolemy I. See Proclus' Commentaries on Euclid's Elements. Bk. II. Ch. IV.
Learning by study must be won;
'Twas ne'er entail'd from son to son.
Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil
O'er books consum'd the midnight oil?
Walkers at leisure learning's flowers may spoil
Nor watch the wasting of the midnight oil.
Gay—Trivia. Bk. II. L. 558.
I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine
And even, alas, Theology
From end to end with labor keen;
And here, poor fool; with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.
Goethe—Faust. I. Night. Bayard Taylor's trans.
Yet, he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declar'd how much he knew,
'Twas certain he could write and cipher too.
| author = Goldsmith
| work = The Deserted Village. L. 205.
While words of learned length and thundering
sound
Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around.
| author = Goldsmith
| work = The Deserted Village. L. 211.
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all it knew.
| author = Goldsmith
| work = The Deserted Village. L. 215
Ed. 1822, printed for John Sharp. Other
editions give "could" for "should," "brain"
for "head."
Men of polite learning and a liberal education.
Matthew Henry—Commentaries. The Acts
Ch. X.
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes
And pause awhile from Learning to be wise;
Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the goal.
See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
