Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Accumulating knowledge and wealth often reveals how limited human understanding and enjoyment truly are.
In plain terms
More learning and money show you know and enjoy less.
What can you take from it?
Pursuit of knowledge and wealth often highlights human limits.

Where it applies

  • philosophical reflection
  • critique of materialism
  • self study

Putting it to work

  • evaluate priorities
  • study philosophy
  • reflect on wealth

Questions to consider

  • Does knowledge increase or decrease satisfaction?
  • What is the value of wealth?

Another view

Some argue knowledge and wealth do increase genuine capability and joy.

More from Edward Young

  1. Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!

    Permalink to quote #65
  2. And all may do what has by man been done.

    Permalink to quote #67
  3. Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds th…

    Permalink to quote #64

Related quotes

  1. What transforms this world is - knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming t…

    Yukio MishimaYukio Mishima quote #1
  2. D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?

    Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin quote #4
  3. The first thing I remember about the world:is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which is at once the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides th…

    Malcolm MuggeridgeMalcolm Muggeridge quote #4