Favorite Quotations

[lapin_agile]

I need to collect quotes about education (what it's good for, y'know) and reading (its pleasures) and thinking (why do it).

So can you help a girl out? Got any favorites in these categories?

This entry was originally posted at http://lapin-agile.dreamwidth.org/116255.html. (There are

Comments

[ashkitty]

Well, my very favourite is from T.H. White, The Once and Future King:

The best thing for being sad", replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.

[lapin_agile]

That's awesome! Perfectperfectperfect.

Thank you. :)

Here are a few of my favorites.

[cincodemaygirl]

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." - Niels Bohr

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." - Socrates

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself." - Chinese Proverb

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts." - C. S. Lewis

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." - Ray Bradbury

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves." - E. M. Forster

"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." - Franz Kafka

Re: Here are a few of my favorites.

[lapin_agile]

Thank you! That's a great collection. I knew I could count on you folks!

[ihlanya]

As a South African, I would be remiss not to post about Nelson Mandela:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

[lapin_agile]

Thank you. I'm very glad to have Mandela represented here.

[ihlanya]

*twirls you*

[black_dog]

Goethe says of himself, that the first sight of a work of genuine art was always displeasing to him. There was no correspondence between his own mind, and the object he was contemplating. It would not fit -- became galling. He was made conscious of a deficiency in himself; and the consequence was, a feeling of annoyance and irritation at the cause of it. Yet if he could overcome this aversion, and set himself at work to understand it, in faith that ultimately he would find himself repaid, he never failed to make the most delightful discoveries; new powers developed themselves in himself, and beauty after beauty came out in the object.

-- J. A. Froude

[lapin_agile]

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." S. Beckett.

[black_dog]

Also, Hi there! I am late catching up with LJ, what a surprise! How are you? Are you going to post lots and lots of stuff for Poetry Month?

[lapin_agile]

You're not late. Or not any later than I am in replying to your poetry month shot across the bow. I've been sort of hoping to be inspired into poetry, but feel very prosaic so far this month. (See above.)