Great Throughts Treasury

"Speake as the common people do, thinke as wise men do."

"Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty."

"To be rash is to be bold without shame and without skill."

"It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience."

"Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty, and learning teacheth safely, when experience maketh more miserable than wise."

"By experience we find out a shorter way by a long wandering. Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty."

"Chide not [the pupil] hastily; for that shall both dull his wit, and discourage his diligence; but [ad]monish him gently; which shall make him both willing to amend and glad to go forward in love and hope of learning."

"He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him."

"I said... how, and why, young children, were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning."

"Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall."

"In mine opinion, love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning."

"In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry,wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry."

"Let the master praise him, and say, Here ye do well. For, I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise."

"Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world."

"The least learned, for the most part, have been always most ready to write."

"There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise."

"To laugh, to lie, to flatter to face, Foure waies in court to win men's grace."

"Young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning."

"To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style."

"A man, groundly learned already, may take much profit himself in using by epitome to draw other men?s works, for his own memory sake, into shorter room."

"A wit in youth not over dull, heavy, knotty, and lumpish, but hard, tough, and though somewhat staffish, both for learning and whole course of living proveth always best."

"A wit quick without lightness, sharp without brittleness, desirous of good things without newfangleness, diligent in painful things without wearisomeness."

"Bring his style from all loose grossness to such firm fastness in Latin, as in Demosthenes."

"But I know as many, or mo, and some, sometime my dear friends, (for whose sake I hate going into that country the more,) who, parting out of England fervent in the love of Christ?s doctrine, and well furnished with the fear of God, returned out of Italy worse transformed than ever was any in Circe?s court. I know divers, that went out of England men of innocent life, men of excellent learning, who returned out of Italy, not only with worse manners, but also with less learning; neither so willing to live orderly, nor yet so hable to speak learnedly, as they were at home, before they went abroad."

"But to our purpose, young men, by any means lessening the love of learning, when by time they come to their own rule, they carry commonly, from the school with them, a perpetual hatred of their master and a continual contempt of learning. If ten Gentlemen be asked why they forget so soon in Court that which they were learning so long in school, eight of them, or let me be blamed, will lay the fault on their ill handling by their schoolmasters."

"Corrupt manners in living breed false judgment in doctrine: sin and fleshliness bring forth sects and heresies."

"Easily be won to be very well willing to learn. And wit in children, by nature, namely memory, the only key and keeper of all learning, is readiest to receive and surest to keep any manner of thing that is learned in youth: This, lewd and learned, by common experience, know to be most true. For we remember nothing so well when we be old, as those things which we learned when we were young: And this is not strange, but common in all nature's works. Every man sees (as I said before) new wax is best for printing: new clay, fittest for working: new shorn wool, aptest for soon and surest dying: new fresh flesh, for good and durable salting. And this similitude is not rude, nor borrowed of the larder house, but out of his schoolhouse, of whom the wisest of England need not be ashamed to learn. Young grafts grow not only soonest, but also fairest, and bring always forth the best and sweetest fruit: young whelps learn more easily to carry: young popinjays learn quickly to speak: And so, to be short, if in all other things though they lack reason, sense, and life, the similitude of youth is fittest to all goodness, surely nature, in mankind, is most beneficial and effectual in this behalf."

"For all this good propriety of words and pureness of phrases in Terence, you must not follow him always in placing of them."

"I know divers noble personages, and many worthy gentlemen of England, whom all the syren songs of Italy could never untwine from the mast of God?s word; nor no inchantment of vanity overturn them from the fear of God and love of honesty."

"He hazardeth much who depends for his learning on experience. An unhappy master, he that is only made wise by many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant, that is neither rich nor wise till he has been bankrupt. By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering."

"I remember when I was young, in the north, they went to the grammar school little children: they came from thence great lubbers: always learning, and little profiting: learning without book everything, understanding within the book little or nothing."

"Is he, that is apt by goodness of wit and appliable by readiness of will to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of the body that must another day serve learning, not troubled, mangled, and halved, but sound, whole, full, and able to do their office: as, a tongue, not stammering, or over hardly drawing forth words, but plain, and ready to deliver the meaning of the mind: a voice, not soft, weak, piping, womanish, but audible, strong, and manlike: a countenance, not worn and crabbed, but fair and comely: a personage, not wretched and deformed, but tall and goodly for surely, a comely countenance, with a goodly stature, gives credit to learning and authority to the person: otherwise commonly either open contempt or privy disfavour does hurt, or hinder, both person and learning. And even as a fair stone requires to be set in the finest gold, with the best workmanship, or else it loses much of the Grace and price, even so, excellency in learning, and namely Divinity, joined with a comely personage, is a marvelous Jewel in the world. And how can a comely body be better employed, than to serve the fairest exercise of God's greatest gift, and that is learning. But commonly, the fairest bodies are bestowed on the foulest purposes. I would it were not so: and with examples herein I will not meddle: yet I wish that those should both mind it, and meddle with it, which have most occasion to look to it, as good and wise fathers should do, and greatest authority to amend it, as good and wise magistrates ought to do: And yet I will not let openly to lament the unfortunate case of learning herein."

"Is he that is naturally bold to ask any question, desirous to search out any doubt, not ashamed to learn of the meanest, not afraid to go to the greatest, until he be perfectly taught, and fully satisfied."

"Is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise."

"It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children."

"Learning is both hindered and injured to, by the ill choice of them that send young scholars to the universities. Of whom must needs come all our Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians."

"It is good manners, not rank, wealth, or beauty, that constitute the real lay."

"Nothing hath more dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning, than care in making of Latin."

"Quick wits are more quick to enter speedily than able to pierce far: like sharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned."

"Or plain and perfect way of teaching children, to understand, write, and speak, the Latin tongue, but specially purposed for the private bringing up of youth in Gentlemen's and Noblemen's houses, and commodious also for all such, as have forgot the Latin tongue, and would, by themselves, without a schoolmaster, in short time, and with small pain, recover a sufficient ability, to understand, write, and speak Latin"

"Some wits, moderate enough by nature, be many times marred by over much study and use of some sciences, namely, Music, Arithmetic, and Geometry. These sciences, as they sharpen men's wits over much, so they change men's manners over sore, if they be not moderately mingled and wisely applied to some good use of life. Mark all Mathematical heads, which be only and wholly bent to those sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, and how unapt to serve in the world. This is not only known now by common experience, but uttered long before by wise men's judgment and sentence."

"Quick wits commonly be in desire new-fangled; in purpose unconstant; bold with any person; busy in every matter; soothing such as be present, nipping any that is absent."

"Over-much quickness of wit, either given by nature or sharpened by study, doth not commonly bring greatest learning, best manners, or happiest life in the end."

"To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do."

"Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little; even as twenty to one fall into sickness rather by over-much fulness than by any lack."

"To follow rather the Goths in rhyming than the Greeks in true versifying were even to eat acorns with swine when we may freely eat wheat bread among men."

"This book advisedly read, and diligently followed but one year at home, would do more good than three years? travel abroad."

"Therefore, if to the goodness of nature be joined the wisdom of the teacher in leading young wits into a right and plain way of learning, surely children kept up in God's fear and governed by his grace, may most easily be brought well to serve God and country both by virtue and wisdom."

"To laugh, to lie, to flatter, to face: four ways in Court to win men grace. If you be thrall to none of these, away good Peek goose, hence John Cheese: mark well my word, and mark their deed, and think this verse part of your Creed."

"The readiest way to entangle the mind with false doctrine is first to entice the will to wanton living."