Inspirational Quotes on Learning

“Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game”

“Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books." [ ]”

“We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.”

“These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race”

“The most influential of all educational factor is the conversation in a child's home.”

“To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.”

“And this is the sense of the word "grammar" which our inaccurate student detests, and this is the sense of the word which every sensible tutor will maintain. His maxim is "a little, but well"; that is, really know what you say you know: know what you know and what you do not know; get one thing well before you go on to a second; try to ascertain what your words mean; when you read a sentence, picture it before your mind as a whole, take in the truth or information contained in it, express it in your own words, and, if it be important, commit it to the faithful memory. Again, compare one idea with another; adjust truths and facts; form them into one whole, or notice the obstacles which occur in doing so. This is the way to make progress; this is the way to arrive at results; not to swallow knowledge, but (according to the figure sometimes used) to masticate and digest it.”

“Armour belonging to someone else either chops off you or weighs you down or is too tight”

“But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon’s History, Evelyn’s Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell’s own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.”

“Do not feel surprise at being schooled amid toil: you are being schooled for a wondrous destiny.”

“If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child's finest teachers.”

“God designed the church to be a community of lifelong learners under the earthly guidance of leaders who are teachers at heart. The Christian faith is not a finite course of study for the front-end of adulthood. Our mind-set shouldn’t be to first do our learning and then spend the rest of our lives drawing from that original deposit of knowledge. Rather, ongoing health in the Christian life is inextricably linked to ongoing learning.”

“During one of our sessions I had the feeling that the therapist was trying to lead me to some major insight that might help save the day for me. When I asked if that was the case, she acknowledged it, but when I asked if she would be willing simply to tell me in some many words what the insight was, she demurred. That was not the sway psychotherapy worked, she said. It was something I would have to come to on my own if it was to have any real value for me, she said, or something like that. But then as the end of the hour drew near, she relented and put into words what it was she had been trying to lead me to see. There was nothing in the world just then that I was more fascinated to hear - for all I knew my recovery itself might depend on it - but even later that same day I couldn't have told you what she said nor could I possibly tell you now. I was simply not ready to hear it yet. The words I could hear all right, but in terms of their meaning I was as deaf as my mother before me, and possibly, like her, because I chose to be deaf. Possibly I was not ready to be well yet either.”

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of children tends toward the formation of character.”

“When I teach and mentor leaders, I remind them that if they stop learning, they stop leading”

“The greatest enemy of learning is knowing”

“...and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”

“He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!”

“Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”

“When people fail, we are inclined to find fault with them, but if you look more closely, you will find that God had some particular truth for them to learn, which the trouble they are in is to teach them.”