Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing
for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to
riches.--_Cicero._
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._
No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he
knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues
ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a
few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which
thou dost not understand.--_Thomas a Kempis._
Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless
commodity, but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning
being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am
afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most
of the great fortunes in the kingdom.--_Fielding._
For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive,
nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if
they be accompanied by a bad training is a much greater
misfortune.--_Plato._
No power can exterminate the seeds of liberty when it has germinated in
the blood of brave men. Our religion of to-day is still that of
martyrdom; to-morrow it will be the religion of victory.--_Mazzini._
~Leisure.~--"Never less idle than when idle," was the motto which the
admirable Vittoria Colonna wrought upon her husband's dressing-gown. And
may we not justly regard our appreciation of leisure as a test of
improved character and growing resources?--_Tuckerman._
Leisure is gone; gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the
pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains
to the door on sunny afternoons.--_George Eliot._
~Libels.~--Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the
protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property.
Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all
valuable. The law forbids you to revenge; when it ties up the hands of
some, it ought to restrain the tongues of others.--_Burke._
If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the
suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there
are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see
the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that
envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.--_Balzac._
~Liberty.~--Liberty is the right to do what the laws allow; and if a
citizen could do what they forbid, it would be no longer liberty,
because others would have the same powers.--_Montesquieu._
If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will
burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire,
it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains
may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave
both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place
or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.--_Daniel
Webster._
Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the
heart.--_Washington._
~Library.~--A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the
learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to
wander at random over many.--_Seneca._
He has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four
walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world,
and the glories of a modern one.--_Longfellow._
What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the
souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labors to these
Bodleians were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I
do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I
could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid
their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is
fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid
the happy orchard.--_Lamb._
~Life.~--Life is a quaint puzzle. Bits the most incongruous join into each
other, and the scheme thus gradually becomes symmetrical and clear;
when, lo! as the infant clasps his hands, and cries, "See, see! the
puzzle is made out," all the pieces are swept back into the box--black
box with the gilded nails!--_Bulwer-Lytton._