Quotations

“Every art is best taught by example. Nothing contributes more to the cultivation of propriety than remarks on the works of those who have most excelled.”

Arguing that excellence is learned through close attention to excellent models · Lives of the Poets, Pope

Art
Learning

Samuel Johnson

“The only sound technical rules are those that are founded on a study of what pleases: if what you write is to please you must see how your predecessors did it.”

Craft develops through attentive study of effective writing from the past · The English Novel

Ford Madox Hueffer

“Nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.”

Suggesting that forgotten learning can still shape judgement and understanding · Essay, Eton Reform II, 1861

William Johnson Cory

“The group is a support to individuals not strong enough to stand alone. It is at the same time a useful school for young poets.”

Sees coteries as both crutch and apprenticeship · Book, Some Contemporary Poets, 1920

Harold Monro

“Other desires perish in their gratification, but the desire of knowledge never.”

Contrasting intellectual curiosity with appetites exhausted by satisfaction · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

A.E.Housman

“I set myself certain studies and these I pursued at night when I should be resting from a laborious day.”

Shows the discipline behind his largely self-directed education · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I took a certificate of one hundred and twenty words a minute at Pitman's shorthand and soon knew Euclid as well as a man of Trinity College.”

Combines pride in self-education with characteristic confidence · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“The true aim of Science is something other than utility.”

Rejecting the idea that knowledge is justified only by practical usefulness · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

A.E.Housman

“It was Horace who made a poet and scholar of me.”

She credited Horace Wylie with the reading and discipline that formed her craft · Recalled remark, about six years after leaving Washington

Elinor Wylie

“Experience of life has been my chief earthly teacher, and one gains that every day.”

Valuing lived experience as a continuing source of wisdom · Letter to Mrs. George Payson, 31 October 1875

Elizabeth Prentiss

“Every exercise of our faculties, says Aristotle, has some good for its aim.”

Opening his argument by connecting learning with the pursuit of human good · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

A.E.Housman

“My standpoint has changed in many ways here — I think I may say: broadened.”

Original: Mein Standpunkt hat sich hierin mannigfach verändert – ich darf wohl sagen: erweitert. — A succinct acknowledgement that intellectual growth can mean widening one's outlook · Letter to Christian Schmitt, 1902 (German)

Ernst Stadler

“Nobody's experience ever suits us except our own.”

Wryly suggesting that wisdom borrowed from others rarely feels sufficient · Landoniana, from Romance and Reality

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

“A poet is not born, but made.”

Presenting poetry as a disciplined art developed through study and practice · Essay, Observations in the Art of English Poesie

Thomas Campion

“I am living in every respect very happily, that I have every advantage of improvement, and that if I could only hear from home I should have nothing to wish for.”

Balancing contentment abroad with the emotional pull of home · Letter from Europe

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“I read books on logic and astronomy and could point out the planets and discuss on the nebulae of the Milky Way.”

His intellectual curiosity ranged far beyond literature · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Although the art of poetry cannot be grasped or taught by precepts, being more a matter of the mind than of tradition, human craft, experience and labour can still permit a few rules.”

Original: Combien que l'art de Poësie ne se puisse par preceptes comprendre ny enseigner pour estre plus mental que traditif, toutesfois d'autant que l'artifice humain, experience et labeur le peuvent permettre, j'ay bien voulu t'en donner quelques reigles icy. — Poetry treated as a gift of mind first, then of discipline · Abrégé de l'art poétique français, 1565 (French)

Pierre de Ronsard

“The utility of business is not to be compared with the pleasure and innocence of study.”

Reckoning the quiet joys of learning to be superior to commercial ambition · Essay, Of Agriculture

Abraham Cowley

“This book, the book of Nature, I studied in the wilderness like a monk for many years.”

Claims the wild as his real school · Essay, The Independent, June 1879

Joaquin Miller

“The pursuit of knowledge is the one pursuit which grows more delightful the longer it continues.”

Celebrating learning as a pleasure that increases through continued practice. · Journal

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism.”

Distinguishing education from the mere accumulation of information · Essay, Eton Reform II, 1861

William Johnson Cory

“The world demands a general education from us now; we therefore need not concern ourselves further with that. We must make the particular our own.”

Original: Eine allgemeine Ausbildung dringt uns jetzt die Welt ohnehin auf; wir brauchen uns deshalb darum nicht weiter zu bemühen, das Besondere müssen wir uns zueignen. — Goethe distinguishes broad education from the deeper task of developing individual knowledge and expertise. · Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (German)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe