Quotes about learning

Ptahhotep Ptah-hotep

c. 24th century BC · Memphis, ancient Egypt

Be not proud because thou art learned; but discourse with the ignorant man, as with the sage. For no limit can be set to skill, neither is there any craftsman that possesseth full advantages. Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave-maidens on the pebbles.

The Instruction of Ptahhotep, the first teaching · in place of the original: the English translation by Battiscombe Gunn (1906)

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Duauf Tuauf

c. 20th century BC · ancient Egypt · Sending his son to the school for scribes

I would that thou wouldst love Learning as thou lovest thy mother. I wish I were able to make thee to see how beautiful Learning is.

"The Teaching of Duauf for His Son Pepi" · in place of the original: the English translation by E. A. Wallis Budge (1914)

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Confucius 孔子

5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China

"When three of us walk together, there is sure to be a teacher for me among them. I pick out what is good in them and follow it, and what is not good I correct in myself."

子曰：「三人行，必有我師焉。擇其善者而從之，其不善者而改之。」

Analects, book 7 (Shu Er)

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Confucius 孔子

5th century BC · Lu, Spring and Autumn China · To his pupil Zilu

"To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not: that is knowledge."

知之爲知之，不知爲不知，是知也。

Analects, book 2 (Wei Zheng)

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Hippocrates Ἱπποκράτης

c. 400 BC · Kos, ancient Greece

Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.

ὁ βίος βραχὺς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρὴ, ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξὺς, ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερὴ, ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή.

Aphorisms 1.1

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Mencius 孟子

4th century BC · Zou, Warring States China · Speaking of a chapter of the ancient Book of Documents, of which he says he accepts only two or three strips

"If you believe everything in the Book, it would be better to have no Book at all."

盡信書，則不如無書。

Mencius, Jin Xin II

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Epicurus Ἐπίκουρος

early 3rd century BC · Athens, ancient Greece

Let no one put off philosophy while young, nor grow weary of it when old. For no one is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

Μήτε νέος τις ὢν μελλέτω φιλοσοφεῖν, μήτε γέρων ὑπάρχων κοπιάτω φιλοσοφῶν· οὔτε γὰρ ἄωρος οὐδείς ἐστιν οὔτε πάρωρος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν ὑγιαῖνον.

Letter to Menoeceus, in Lives of the Philosophers 10.122

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Thiruvalluvar திருவள்ளுவர்

about 2,000 years ago · Tamil country, South India

Learn flawlessly what is worth learning, and having learned it, live in keeping with it.

கற்க கசடறக் கற்பவை கற்றபின் நிற்க அதற்குத் தக.

Tirukkural 391

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Thiruvalluvar திருவள்ளுவர்

about 2,000 years ago · Tamil country, South India

Whatever is said, and whoever says it, wisdom is to see the truth of the thing.

எப்பொருள் யார்யார்வாய்க் கேட்பினும் அப்பொருள் மெய்ப்பொருள் காண்ப தறிவு.

Tirukkural 423

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Tao Yuanming 陶淵明

late 4th century · Eastern Jin China · A self-portrait written as if it were someone else's biography

He likes to read, but does not insist on understanding everything. Whenever something strikes home, he is so happy he forgets to eat.

好讀書，不求甚解；每有會意，便欣然忘食。

"Biography of Mr. Five Willows"

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Han Yu 韓愈

802 · Tang China

A pupil need not be inferior to his teacher, and a teacher need not be wiser than his pupil. Some hear the Way earlier and some later, and each has his own special study. That is all.

弟子不必不如師，師不必賢於弟子。聞道有先後，術業有專攻，如是而已。

"On Teachers"

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Ferdowsi فردوسی

c. 1010 · Tus, Persia

Whoever has knowledge has power. Through knowledge the old heart grows young.

توانا بود هر که دانا بود ز دانش دل پیر برنا بود

Shahnameh (Book of Kings), prologue

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The Daughter of Takasue 菅原孝標女

1021 (recalled c. 1060) · Heian Japan · At fourteen, the day an aunt gave her the fifty-odd volumes of the Tale of Genji in their box

The Tale of Genji, which I had only glimpsed in snatches, in a hurry, never understanding it and aching to know more: to read it from the first volume, with no one about, lying behind my curtain and drawing out one volume after another, was a feeling I would not have traded for the rank of empress.

はしるはしる、わづかに見つつ、心も得ず心もとなく思ふ源氏を、一の巻よりして、人もまじらず、几帳の内にうち臥して、引き出でつつ見る心地、后の位も何にかはせむ。

Sarashina Diary (Sarashina nikki)

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The Daughter of Takasue 菅原孝標女

1021 (recalled c. 1060) · Heian Japan

All day long, and at night for as long as my eyes stayed open, I kept the lamp close and did nothing but read it.

昼は日ぐらし、夜は目の覚めたるかぎり、灯を近くともして、これを見るよりほかのことなければ

Sarashina Diary (Sarashina nikki)

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Peter Abelard Petrus Abaelardus

c. 1132 · Paris, France

Often examples do more than words to stir or to soothe human feelings.

Sepe humanos affectus aut provocant aut mittigant amplius exempla quam verba.

The Story of My Misfortunes (Historia calamitatum), the first sentence

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Zhu Xi 朱熹

later 12th century · Song China

A square pond of half an acre opens like a mirror, and sky light and cloud shadows wander there together. I ask how it can be so clear: because living water comes to it from the source.

半畝方塘一鑑開，天光雲影共徘徊。 問渠那得清如許，爲有源頭活水來。

"Thoughts on Reading," the first poem, in the Complete Song Poems

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Lu You 陸游

1199 · Song China

What comes from paper is in the end too shallow. Know this for certain: the thing has to be done yourself.

紙上得來終覺淺，絕知此事要躬行。

"Reading on a Winter Night, to Show My Son Ziyu," in the Complete Song Poems

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Leonardo da Vinci

late 15th century · Florence · Milan

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.

From his notebooks · in place of the original: the English translation edited by J. P. Richter (1883)

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Yi Hwang 李滉

1558 · Joseon Korea · When Yi I, twenty-three, came to visit him at Dosan and left after a few days. Yi Hwang was fifty-eight

Sick, I had shut my gate fast and seen nothing of spring. You came and opened my heart, and my mind is awake. Now I know that a man of name is no empty scholar, and I am ashamed that I was not more careful of myself before. Among good grain, do not let the tares ripen fair. The finest dust still harms a mirror newly polished. Strike out the lines of your poem that praise me beyond the truth. Let us each work hard and grow closer day by day.

病我牢關不見春 公來披豁醒心神 已知名下無虛士 堪愧年前闕敬身 嘉穀莫容稊熟美 纖塵猶害鏡磨新 過情詩語須刪去 努力工夫各日親

Toegye jip, the first of four poems "For Yi Sukheon"

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Rene Descartes René Descartes

1637 · France · the Netherlands

I think, therefore I am.

je pense, donc je suis

Discourse on Method, part 4

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Baruch Spinoza Benedictus de Spinoza

1677 · Amsterdam, the Netherlands · The Hague

But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Ethics, the last sentence · in place of the original: the English translation by R. H. M. Elwes (1883)

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Zhang Chao 張潮

1690s · Qing China

Reading in youth is like peeping at the moon through a crack. Reading in middle age is like looking at the moon from the courtyard. Reading in old age is like enjoying the moon from a terrace. How deep the gain goes depends only on how deep one's experience has gone.

少年讀書，如隙中窺月；中年讀書，如庭中望月；老年讀書，如臺上玩月。皆以閱歷之淺深，爲所得之淺深耳。

Dream Shadows (Youmengying)

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Huang Jiaosan 黃交三

1690s · Qing China

Here is someone who truly knows where reading aches and where it itches.

真能知讀書痛癢者也。

A comment attached to this passage in Dream Shadows

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Zhang Zhupo 張竹坡

1690s · Qing China

With this remark, uncle, you have put yourself right in the Palace of the Moon, looking down on the whole wide world, and all of it is clear light like water.

吾叔此論，直置身廣寒宮裏，下視大千世界，皆清光似水矣。

A comment attached to this passage in Dream Shadows

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Olaudah Equiano

1789 · West Africa · London · Looking back on his boyhood, sold as a slave and aboard a European ship for the first time

I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me

The autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1808 · Frankfurt, Germany · Weimar · The old scholar Faust, speaking in his study

I have now, alas, studied philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and, sad to say, theology too, through and through, with burning effort. And here I stand, poor fool that I am, no wiser than I was before.

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, Und leider auch Theologie Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn. Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor! Und bin so klug als wie zuvor

Faust, Part One, "Night"

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1808 · Frankfurt, Germany · Weimar · The devil Mephistopheles, speaking to a student

Grey, dear friend, is all theory, and green is the golden tree of life.

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Faust, Part One, "Study"

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Leo Tolstoy Лев Толстой

March 24, 1847 · Russian Empire · At eighteen, in the first month of his diary, begun in a university clinic

I have changed a great deal, but I still have not reached the degree of perfection (in my studies) that I would like to reach. I do not carry out what I prescribe for myself.

Я много переменился; но все еще не достиг той степени совершенства (в занятиях), которого бы мне хотелось достигнуть. — Я не исполняю того, чтò себе предписываю

Diary, in the Complete Works of Tolstoy, vol. 46

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Samuel Smiles

1859 · Scotland · London

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.

Self-Help

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Charles Darwin

1859 · England

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

On the Origin of Species, the last sentence

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Walt Whitman

1865 · United States · Walking out of an astronomy lecture full of charts and figures

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," in Leaves of Grass

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Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉

1872 · Meiji Japan

"Heaven does not make one person above another, nor one person below another," it is said.

天は人の上に人を造らず人の下に人を造らずと言えり。

An Encouragement of Learning (Gakumon no susume), the opening

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Oscar Wilde

1892 · Ireland · Britain

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Lady Windermere's Fan, Act 3, spoken by Dumby

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Mark Twain

1894 · Missouri, USA · Connecticut

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Pudd'nhead Wilson, a chapter epigraph from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

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Rainer Maria Rilke

1910 · Prague · Paris

I am learning to see. I do not know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and no longer stops at the place where it used to end. I have an interior I did not know of.

Ich lerne sehen. Ich weiß nicht, woran es liegt, es geht alles tiefer in mich ein und bleibt nicht an der Stelle stehen, wo es sonst immer zu Ende war. Ich habe ein Inneres, von dem ich nicht wußte.

The novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

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Natsume Soseki 夏目漱石

1914 · Meiji–Taisho Japan · Words the young K throws at his friend

Anyone without the will to better himself in spirit is a fool.

精神的に向上心のないものは馬鹿だ

Kokoro

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