Lecture

“ What is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance as far as the present moment is concerned? ”

“ To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exasperating. ”

“ The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE KIND TO EACH OTHER." ”

“ There has been a great amount of general reading in books and magazines, and of study in our schools and colleges, upon the subjects he has selected, but the ideas acquired have been vague and unsatisfactory, from lack of observing the actual phenomena that have been read about. The lecturer assumed this state of mind in his hearers, and that the literature of the subject is everywhere accessible for further reference, and he accordingly constructed his course so as to bring under direct observation a wide range of the actual phenomena he had chosen to deal with. ”

“ and hence arises the true vocation of the Scholar; the most widely extended survey of the actual advancement of the human race in general, and the steadfast promotion of that advancement. ”

“ 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 [pg 336] faithful memory. ”

“ Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course. ”

“ To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think [Pg 284] —nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true. ”

“ There are two methods for the literary study of any book—the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view. ”

“ What is the end of study, let me know. KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know. BEROWNE. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense? KING. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. ”

“ your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers’, but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly.” ”

“ This is a very slight circumstance, with which I should not trouble my reader, but for the sake of observing, that every man should keep minutes of whatever he reads. Every circumstance of his studies should be recorded; what books he has consulted; how much of them he has read; at what times; how often the same authors; and what opinions he formed of them, at different periods of his life. ”

“ As he said in an after-dinner speech at a meeting in aid of the Literary Fund, "Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing." ”

“ When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. ”

“ The vice goes so far, indeed, that you may divide literature into two great classes of books. The smaller class of the two consists of the books written by people who had something to say. They had in life learned something, or seen something, or done something, which they really wanted and needed to tell to other people. They told it. And their writings make, perhaps, a twentieth part of the printed literature of the world. It is the part which contains all that is worth reading. The other nineteen-twentieths make up the other class. ”

“ In order to make this oral lesson a science lesson, the objects observed must be selected in a natural sequence; the teacher must be logical in questioning, whether or not she be graphic in description, while the pupils must be independent seekers for knowledge rather than active or passive receptacles of information. I do not say the oral lesson can not be a science lesson, but that oral lessons, as generally given, are not science lessons. ”

“ We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. ”

“ I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.” ”

“ The grateful savants had accepted, and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning. ”

“ All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves. ”

“ —The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves. ”

“ Believe me my friend, my employment, in your field, will not interrupt my reflections. I can study better in the field, than in the chamber; it requires but little study to deliver simple, plain, gospel truth; to pervert this truth, requires a vast deal of worldly wisdom. ”

“ Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all. ”

“ Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; ”

“ Our principle is, that books, instead of growing mouldy behind an iron grating, should be worn out under the eyes of many readers. ”

“ but we read, if we have the true reader’s zest and plate, not to grow more knowing, but to be less pent up and bound within a little circle,—as those who take their pleasure, and not as those who laboriously seek instruction,—as a means of seeing and enjoying the world of men and affairs. ”

“ It is also to be borne in mind that the experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is of the nature of wisdom; ”

“ Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. ”

“ They give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results. ”

“ Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; ”

“ There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you, and you are he; then is a teaching; and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit. ”

“ That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.
However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light; excess burns. ”

“ The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! ”

“ Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings. ”

“ Aphorism or maxim, let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true salt of literature; that those books, at least in prose, are most nourishing which are most richly stored with it; and that it is one of the main objects, apart from the mere acquisition of knowledge, which men ought to seek in the reading of books. ”

“ I believe that in fact there is nothing in anything that we could call ‘learning.’ There is only a kind of knowledge that is everywhere, my friend, and that is Atman. ”

“ What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. ”

“ They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study. ”

“ What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. ”

“ But the school in which good training is most practised will, as a rule, turn out the best scholars. ”

“ The proper study of mankind is books.” ”

“ If you would learn to write, 't is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. ”

“ If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. ”

“ To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning. ”

“ and the truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn. ”

“ Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student. ”