Quotes by British Authors - Page 488

And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.
H. Rider Haggard
I miss being a student," said Abdul Wahid. "I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books.
Helen Simonson
So long as we learn it doesn’t matter who teaches us, does it?
E.R. Braithwaite
The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.
Idries Shah
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?
Idries Shah
I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.
Diana Wynne Jones
One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.
Idries Shah
Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.
Terry Pratchett
The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until you’re all grown up. I’m going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don’t open it.
Philip Pullman
I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away.
John Buchan
To truly learn from someone or something, one must first learn to love them.
Silvia Hartmann
Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?
Idries Shah
Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
Alain de Botton
Odd how we focus on studying wars at at school to form our 'education'. No wonder we know so little about making and forging peace as adults.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
We don't really know anything. Those who accept this are more likely to learn something.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
We attract what we're meant to because we're aware & self-empowered enough to choose most of the time. Other times we have lessons to learn
Jay Woodman
One day," she told us, "you'll have to leave here and go out into the big world out there and earn your living like everyone else. To do that you need to learn. The more you learn now, the more interesting your life will be.
Michael Morpurgo
Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?
Dorothy L. Sayers
Intellectually, what is stimulating to a young man is a problem of obvious practical importance. A young man learning economics, for example, ought to hear lectures from individualists and socialists, protectionists and free-traders, inflationists and believers in the gold standard. He ought to be encouraged to read the best books of the various schools, as recommended by those who believe in them. This would teach him to weigh arguments and evidence, to know that no pinion is certainly right, and to judge men by their quality rather than by their consonance with preconceptions.
Bertrand Russell
One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.
Idries Shah
Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.
Idries Shah
What you learn is often determined by what you need to know. If you think you're weak, you will learn that you are strong. If you think you are indestructible, you will learn that you are fragile. In the end though, you will learn that you are human. You are no more and no less than all those who are learning their lessons as you learn yours.
John Bingham
Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. Boulding
The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.
J.K. Rowling
I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.
Anthony Powell
Importance of the random: keep brushing up against people, books, experiences we don't yet know what to do with.
Alain de Botton
The problem with all students, he said, is that they inevitably stop somewhere. They hear an idea and they hold on to it until it becomes dead; they want to flatter themselves that they know the truth. But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.
Robert Greene
Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.
Alain de Botton
The country inspector's face had shown his intense amazement at the rapid and masterful progress of Holmes' investigation. At first he had shown some disposition to assert his own position, but now he was overcome with admiration, and ready to follow without question wherever Holmes lead.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.
Idries Shah
It was amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child asking questions of its teacher.
Arthur Conan Doyle
You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.
Idries Shah
The text-book is rare that stimulates its reader to ask, Why is this so? Or, How does this connect with what has been read elsewhere?
J. Norman Collie
Looking back now, I would say that this was one of the first valuable lessons I learned, and one that would be useful in my future line of work. Sometimes things go wrong. It is inevitable. But it is a mistake to waste time and energy worrying about events that you cannot influence. Once they have happened, let them go.
Anthony Horowitz
Wearing all that weight of learning like a flower.
Alfred Tennyson
Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.
Idries Shah
She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects.
Thomas Hardy
I learned what research was all about as a research student [with] Stoppani ... Max Perutz, and ... Fred Sanger... From them, I always received an unspoken message which in my imagination I translated as 'Do good experiments, and don’t worry about the rest.
César Milstein
You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.
Idries Shah
There is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.
Idries Shah
None should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.
Idries Shah
The man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.
Idries Shah
She has passed information to you. Figures names and facts. You have learnt nothing very much. But you have a splendid memory. It will help you when you start to learn.
Richard Llewellyn
But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive. There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon’s History, Evelyn’s Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell’s own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.
G.K. Chesterton
If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.
Idries Shah
To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue. Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.
Idries Shah
If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.
Idries Shah
If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no soul.
Idries Shah
Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.
Idries Shah
Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.
Idries Shah
Do not try to be humble: learn humility.
Idries Shah
What I like about this belief is that it makes people look for a big picture, and think more about how they behave in this life and what they achieve, as it might influence their next lives. I alsolike another aspect of it: that negative experiences teach us as much as positive experiences do; sometimes they teach us more.
Daniela I. Norris
Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction.
Idries Shah
I knew that iridium-193 was one of two stable isotopes of iridium, a very rare, very dense metal, but I didn't know that the periodic table even existed.I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.I'd picked up a few Latin words, and a smattering of Elvish, but my French was non-existent.I'd read more than one book of more than one thousand pages (more than once), but I wouldn't have been able to identify a metaphor if it poked me in the eye.By secondary-school standards, I was quite a dunce.
Gavin Extence
The Sufi is 'One who does not care when something is taken from him, but who does not cease to seek for what he has not.
Idries Shah
If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.
John Lubbock
A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.
John Lubbock
Study institutions may become visible when the head is more emptied of imaginings.
Idries Shah
They say: 'Seek wisdom while you have the strength, or you may lose the strength without gaining wisdom.
Idries Shah