Part 53

The pleasure and delight of knowledge far surpasseth all other in nature. We see in all other pleasures there is satiety; and after they be used, their verdure departeth, which showeth well that they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable.--Bacon.

What novelty is worth the sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?--George Eliot.

The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior who will not begin with being inferior.--Sydney Smith.

He who knows much has much to care for.--Lessing.

Properly, there is no other knowledge but that which is got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools; a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, till we try and fix it.--Carlyle.

He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.--Bible.

To know by rote is no knowledge; it is only a retention of what is intrusted to the memory. That which a man truly knows may be disposed of without regard to the author, or reference to the book from whence he had it.--Montaigne.

He who cherishes his old knowledge, so as continually to acquire new, he may be a teacher of others.--Confucius.

A taste of every sort of knowledge is necessary to form the mind, and is the only way to give the understanding its due improvement to the full extent of its capacity.--Locke.

Knowledge has, in our time, triumphed, and is triumphing, over prejudice, and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson, that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.--Daniel Webster.

Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.--Tyndall.

The shortest and the surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to remount to first principles, and take nobody's word about them.--Bolingbroke.

Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth; the tree of knowledge is not that of life.--Byron.

The seeds of knowledge maybe planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.--Johnson.

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.--Cowper.

It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means; all its attainments helps to new conquests.--Daniel Webster.

The love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the infirm excitement of passions and vices.--Beecher.

There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.--Johnson.

We always know everything when it serves no purpose, and when the seal of the irreparable has been set upon events.--Théophile Gautier.

All the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of humanity.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Labor.~--Labor is the divine law of our existence; repose is desertion and suicide.--Mazzini.

Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!--Carlyle.

The fact is nothing comes; at least nothing good. All has to be fetched.--Charles Buxton.

Genius begins great works, labor alone finishes them.--Joubert.

As steady application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honorable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty, and progress is altogether impossible without it.--Samuel Smiles.

Nature is just towards men. It recompenses them for their sufferings; it renders them laborious, because to the greatest toils it attaches the greatest rewards.--Montesquieu.

Virtue's guard is Labor, ease her sleep.--Tasso.

Alexander the Great, reflecting on his friends degenerating into sloth and luxury, told them that it was a most slavish thing to luxuriate, and a most royal thing to labor.--Barrow.