Other related topics at:
All In Your Mind
Knowledge/Learning
12. Disappointment; Experience;
Learning; Reality
"I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to
compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to
time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind
of observation that we grow daily less liable to be
disappointed."
Johnson: Letter to Bennet Langton
Link
23. Learning
"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even
supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be
content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to
acquire it."
Boswell: Life
Link
29. Learning
"Why, Sir, that knowledge may in some cases produce unhappiness,
I allow. But, upon the whole, knowledge, per se, is
certainly an object which every man would wish to attain,
although, perhaps, he may not take the trouble necessary for
attaining it."
Boswell: Life
Link
36. Learning
"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he
reads as a task will do him little good."
Boswell: Life
Link
49. Education; Learning
We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he
thought was best to teach them first. Johnson: "Sir, it
is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg
you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand
disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time
your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of the
two things you should teach your child first, another boy has
learnt them both."
Boswell: Life
Link
52. Learning
"Sir, a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind;
and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be
willing to give all that he has, to get knowledge."
Boswell: Life
Link
63. Education; Learning; Reading
"People have now-a-days got a strange opinion that everything
should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures
can do so much as reading the books from which the lectures are
taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures,
except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach
chemistry by lectures:-- You might teach the making of shoes by
lectures!"
Boswell: Life
Link
99. Learning; Literacy;
Over-anticipation
Mr. Langton told us, he was about to establish a school upon his
estate, but it had been suggested to him, that it might have a
tendency to make the people less industrious. Johnson:"No,
Sir. While learning to read and write is a distinction, the few
who have that distinction may be the less inclined to work; but
when everybody learns to read and write, it is no longer a
distinction. A man who has a laced waistcoat is too fine a man
to work; but if everybody had laced waistcoats, we should have
people working in laced waistcoats. There are no people whatever
more industrious, none who work more, than our manufacturers;
yet, they have all learned to read and write. Sir, you must not
neglect of doing a thing immediately good; from fear of remote
evil; -- from fear of its being abused. A man who has candles
may sit up too late, which he would not do if he had not candles;
but nobody will deny that the art of making candles , by which
light is continued to us beyond the time that the sun gives us
light, is a valuable art, and ought to be preserved."
Boswell: Life
Link
117. Learning; Scotland
"There is in Scotland a diffusion of learning, a certain portion
of it widely and thinly spread. A merchant has as much learning
as one of their clergy."
Boswell: Life
Link
118. Knowledge; Learning
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we
know where we can find information upon it."
Boswell: Life
Link
209. Learning; Publishing
A gentleman maintained that the art of printing had hurt real
learning, by disseminating idle writings. Johnson: "Sir,
if it had not been for the art of printing, we should now have no
learning at all; for books would have perished faster than they
could have been transcribed."
Boswell: Life
Link
246. Learning; Reading
Dr. Johnson advised me to-day, to have as many books about me as
I could; that I might read upon any subject upon which I had a
desire for instruction at the time. "What you have read
then (said he,) you will remember; but if you have not a
book immediately ready, and the subject moulds in your mind, it
is a chance if you again have a desire to study it." He added,
"If a man never has an eager desire for instruction, he should
prescribe a task for himself. But it is better if a man reads
from immediate inclination."
Boswell: Life
Link
378. Language; Learning; Literacy
"When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to
refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have
undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a
proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce
them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and
permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the
best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon
another. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance.
But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man
leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to
learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language,
but there can be no polished language without books."
Johnson: Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Link
434. Academia; Learning
"The life that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and
is very little diversified by events. To talk in public, to
think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer
inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the
world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued
but by men like himself."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
475. Humanities; Learning; Progress;
Science
"There is no part of history so generally useful as that which
relates the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement
of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes
of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of
thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and
the revolutions of the intellectual world. If accounts of
battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the
useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected; those who have
kingdoms to govern have understandings to cultivate."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
476. Art; Contemplation; Learning
"Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is
formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this,
contemplative life has the advantage: great actions are seldom
seen, but the labors of art are always at hand for those who
desire to know what art has been able to perform."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
496. Knowledge; Learning;
Patience
"Men advanced far in knowledge do not love to repeat the elements
of their art."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
575. Learning; Self-Knowledge
"When a man employs himself upon remote and unnecessary subjects,
and wastes his life upon questions which cannot be resolved, and
of which the solution would conduce very little to the
advancement of happiness; when he lavishes his hours in
calculating the weight of the terraqueous globe, or in adjusting
successive systems of worlds beyond the reach of the telescope;
he may be very properly recalled from his excursions by this
precept [Know Thyself], and reminded that there is a
nearer being with which it is his duty to be more acquainted;
and from which his attention has been hitherto withheld by
studies to which he has no other motive than vanity or
curiosity."
Johnson: Rambler #24 (June 9, 1750)
Link
866. Knowledge; Learning
"Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can
deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any
other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered
impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed
with persecution."
Johnson: Rambler #77 (December 11, 1750)
Link
900. Education; Learning
"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."
Boswell: Life of Johnson
Link
1,022. Learning; Teachers
"It is told that in the art of education he [Milton] performed
wonders... Those who tell or receive these stories should
consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The
speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse.
Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell
what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much
patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate
sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd
misapprehension."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,023. Learning; Moral
Instruction
"The knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that
knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent
business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or
conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first
requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and
wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind,
and with those examples which may be said to embody truth and
prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and
justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all
places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians
only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is
necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at
leisure."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,024. Learning; Moral
Instruction
"I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn
philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life,
but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from
life to nature. They seem to think that we ar eplaced here to
watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars.
Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was, how
to do good and avoid evil."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,135. Learning; Progress
"Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the
disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they
cannot comprehend."
Johnson: Rambler #117 (April 30, 1751)
Link
1,208. Learning; Perseverance;
Progress
"The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt
but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made
by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of
science are formed by the continued accumulation of single
propositions."
Johnson: Rambler #137 (July 9, 1751)
Link
1,641. Learning
"The acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the
advantages of society: he that never compares his notions with
those of others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and
very seldom discovers the objections which may be raised against
his opinions; he, therefore, often thinks himself in possession
of truth, when he is only fondling an errour long since
exploded."
Johnson: Adventurer #126 (January 19, 1754)
Link
1,667. Learning; Reading
"Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we
cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books of
science, though without any fixed desire of improvement, will
grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or
religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the
ideas which are often offered to the mind, will at last find a
lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them."
Johnson: Adventurer #137 (February 26, 1754)
Link
1,844. Learning
"Of learning as of virtue, it may be affirmed, that it is at once
honoured and neglected. Whoever forsakes it will for ever look
after it with longing, lament the loss which he does not
endeavour to repair, and desire the good which he wants
resolution to seize and keep."
Johnson: Idler #94 (February 2, 1760)
Link
1,845. Learning
"It is the great excellence of learning, that it borrows very
little from time or place; it is not confined to season or to
climate, to cities or to the country, but may be cultivated and
enjoyed where no other pleasure can be obtained. But this
quality, which constitutes much of its value, is one occasion of
neglect; what may be done at all times with equal propriety, is
deferred from day to day, till the mind is gradually reconciled
to the omission, and the attention is turned to other objects.
Thus habitual idleness gains too much power to be conquered, and
the soul shrinks from the idea of intellectual labour and
intenseness of meditation."
Johnson: Idler #94 (February 2, 1760)
Link
