Samuel Johnson Quotes on Learning
-
Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.
-
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
-
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
-
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
-
The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.
-
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
-
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
-
A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.'
-
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
-
I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, 'Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.'
-
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
-
There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
-
As the Spanish proverb says, 'He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
-
Greek, sir, is like lace; every man gets as much of it as he can.
-
A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.