quotations on learning

Learning

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.

Kent Nerburn

There is no evil in the universe
which is not the result
of ignorance, and which
would not, if we were ready
and willing to learn its lesson,
lead us to a higher wisdom,
and then vanish away.

James Allen

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most.

Theodore Parker

A person's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Nothing in life is more exciting and rewarding than the sudden flash of insight that leaves you a changed person, not only changed, but for the better.

Arthur Gordon

Learning is not attained by chance.
It must be sought for with ardor
and attended to with diligence.

Abigail Adams

Real education should educate us out of self
into something far finer--
into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.

Lady Nancy Astor

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is
the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do,
when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not;
it is the first lesson that ought to be learned;
and however early a person’s training begins,
it is probably the last lesson he or she learns thoroughly.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Education should be of value to men and women both as private individuals
and as free, self-reliant, and responsible members of the community to which
they belong. It should help them, as individuals, to grow in self-mastery and
personal depth, to develop wider and deeper appreciations, to acquire
an enthusiasm for hard work, to love good talk and good books,
to delight in the adventures of intellectual curiosity, to become fair-minded,
open-minded, and generous in all their human responses.

American Association of Colleges

HOME - contents - Full Life Online
abundance - acceptance - achievement - action - adversity - aging - anticipation - appreciation - attitude - authenticity
awareness - balance - beauty - being yourself - beliefs - body - character - children - Christianity - coincidence
commitment - common sense - community - compassion - compliments - compromise - confidence - conscience
contentment - courage - creativity - death - determination - earth - ego - encouragement - enthusiasm - eternity
faith - family - flowers - forgiveness - freedom - friendship - fun - gardening - gentleness - giving - God - goodness
grace - gratitude -growing up - happiness - healing - helpfulness - home - hope - humility - imagination
integrity - joy - kindness - laughter - learning - letting go - life - listening - love - marriage - miracles - mystery
nature - now - open-mindedness - opportunity - optimism - patience - peace - perseverance - perspective
play - prayer - principle - purpose - religion - rest - role models - sadness - self - self-respect - serving others - silence
simplicity - spirit - success - time - today - truth - values - war - wisdom - wonder - work - worship
spring - summer - fall - winter - Christmas - Thanksgiving - New Year - zen sayings
obstacles to living life fully - e-zine archives - quotations contents

As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught
not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference
to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness
but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbor and
self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.

Natalia Ginzburg

Most people are just trying to get through the day. Be committed to learn to get
from the day. Don’t just get through it; get from it. Learn from it. Let the
day teach you. Join the university of life. What a difference that will make
in your future. Commit yourself to learning. Commit yourself to absorbing.
Be like a sponge. Get it. Don’t miss it.

Jim Rohn

People only begin to grow when they cease to whine and revile, and commence
to search for the hidden justice which regulates their lives. And as they adapt
their minds to that regulating factor, they cease to accuse others as the cause
of their condition, and build themselves up in strong and noble thoughts. They
cease to kick against circumstances, but begin to use them as aids to their more
rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden
powers and possibilities within themselves.

James Allen

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

Mark Twain

I like to have a person's knowledge comprehend more than
one class of topics, one row of shelves. I like a person who
likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even
how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you
do know and what you don’t. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you
need to know; and it’s knowing how to use the information you get.

William Feather

The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts.
Interesting thoughts can only live in cultivated minds. Those who decide
to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music,
good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company,
good conversation—what are they? They are the happiest people
in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves,
they are the cause of happiness in others.

William Lyon Phelps

Of course, we're obligated to improve ourselves only if
we want to make this world a better place. If we don't
care about that, then we can spend our lives being
entertained passively, learning nothing new at all.
But then we're not fulfilling our responsibility
of contributing to the world.

tom walsh

Too much learning makes one proud. One must bend
one's head, realizing the limitations of reason.
It can only take you to the gate and it has
to be left behind when you enter the realm
of the Spirit. You have to unlearn what
you have learned and become as
simple and guileless as a child.

Papa Ramdas

You can be very, very good at anything you do, but excelling
does take work. In societies in which we expect life to just
all into our laps somehow, we've lost the respect for the value
of developing ourselves, but if we're going to excel, not just succeed,
we must develop ourselves past the ordinary. Reading a book a week
on a topic of our choice will make us one of the best-read people
in the field within a year. Then you can solve problems and devise
ideas and plans much more easily and effectively than if you
never had tried to develop your abilities.

unattributed

When I learn something new--and it happens every day--I feel a little
more at home in the universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.

Bill Moyers

So many of our lessons are learned, it would seem,
too late to use on Earth.

Marion Cran

If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing
one can do is to study the words of those who were.

Aldous Huxley

Trees and stones will teach you that which
you can never learn from masters.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Only an open mind still has room for new knowledge. What is outgrown
and used up must be discarded to make room for what is yet to be learned.
And much of the best thinking is done alone--in deserts, on beaches,
in bed, behind closed doors. It is why we say we need to get away--to
escape from clutter and busyness--to hear ourselves think.

Robert Fulghum