Great Throughts Treasury

"People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they; then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much; more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them." - Frederika Bremer

"Go and try to save a soul, and you will see how well it is worth saving, how capable it is of the most complete salvation. Not by pondering about it, nor by talking of it, but by saving it, you learn its preciousness." - Phillips Brooks

"The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top." - Joyce Brothers

"Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, by reiteration chiefly." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"When God will educate a man, He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the Necessities rather than to the Graces, that by knowing all suffering he may know also the eternal consolations." - Celia Burleigh

"If from society we learn to live, it is solitude should teach us how to die." -

"In her starry shade of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn the language of another world." -

"Any place that anyone young can learn something useful from with experience is an educational institution." - Al Capp, full name Alfred Gerald Caplin

"To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson." - Charles Bruce Catton

"We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past." -

"Men who have had a great deal of experience learn not to lose their tempers." - Victor Cherbuliez

"The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. We learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty." -

"Read, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and take your nourishment in at your eyes, shut up your mouth, and chew the cud of understanding." - William Congreve

"There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivises. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, popularity, vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may learn to cease from hating." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

"Let's learn to live, for we must die alone." - George Crabbe

"We must learn to tailor our concepts to fit reality, instead of trying to stuff reality into our concepts." - Victor Daniels, aka Chief Thundercloud

"If ever I am an instructress, it will be to learn more than to teach." -

"Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment." - John Dewey

"Since changes are going on any way, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed." - John Dewey

"We usually learn to wait only when we have no longer anything to wait for." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"Many adults draw childlike drawings and many children give up drawing at age nine or ten. These children grow up to become the adults who say they never could draw and can't even draw a straight line. The same adults, however, if questioned, often say that they would have liked to learn to draw well, just for their own satisfaction at solving the drawing problems that plagued them as children. But they felt that they had to stop drawing because they couldn't learn how to draw." - Betty Edwards

"Thoroughly to teach another is the best way to learn for yourself." - Tyron Edwards

"Thoroughly to teach another is the best way to learn yourself." - Tyron Edwards

"If you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows." -

"It is the worst of madness to learn what has to be unlearnt." -

"Some wisdom must thou learn from one who's wise." - Euripedes NULL

"Schools exploit you because they tap your power and use it to perpetuate society’s trip, while they teach you not to respect your own... Schools petrify society because their method, characterized by coercion from the top down, works against any substantial social change... Schools petrify society because students, through them, learn to adjust unquestioningly to institutions." - Jerry Farber

"A man must learn to forgive himself." - Arthur Davison Ficke, sometimes published under the pen name of "Anne Knish"

"Truth comes home to the mind so naturally that when we learn it for the first time, it seems as though we did no more than recall it to our memory." - Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, also called Bernard de Bouyer

"Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward." - Henry Ford

"Experience keeps a dear school; but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct." - Benjamin Franklin

"Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak." - Benjamin Franklin

"We learn simply by the exposure of living. Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least." - David Gardner, fully David Pierpont Gardner

"By words we learn thoughts, and by thoughts we learn life." - Jean-Baptiste Girard

"Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"[Happiness] always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is." -

"Today we have to open ourselves to the truth in all religions. Each religion must learn to discern its essential truth and to reject its cultural and historical limitations." - Bede Griffiths, born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion

"O you who would learn the marvels of Love from the copybook of reason, I am afraid that you will never really see the point." - Hafiz, pen name of Shams-ud-din Muhammad NULL

"We are all, it seems, saving ourselves from the Senior Prom. But many of us forget that somewhere along the way we must learn to dance." -

"The times of our lives which hold the deepest meaning for us, from which we learn the most, are very often those when we are face to face with problems which seem too great for our strength, with illness, and with death." - Janet Harrison

"To learn the value of money, it is not necessary to know the nice things it can get for you, you have to have experienced the trouble of getting it." - Philippe Hériat, pen name of Raymond-Gerard Payelle

"Man was created to learn wisdom." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"A man who does not learn to live while he is getting a living, is a poorer man after his wealth is won, than he was before." -

"It is profitable to cast aside toys and to learn wisdom." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

"When shall we learn that he who multiplieth possessions, multiplieth troubles, and that the one single use of things which we call our own, is that they may be his who hath need of them?" - Thomas Hughes

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." - Aldous Leonard Huxley

"In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it." -

"Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten." -