In youth open your mind, And let all learning in; Words the head does not shape Are worthless, out and in. Words wit has not salted,No nearer the heart than the lip, Are nothing more than wind, A puppy's insolent yelp.

-Anonymous
c.1500  'To a Boy'. Translated from the Irish by Michael O'Donovan ('Frank O'Connor').

Young children [are] sooner allured by love than driven by beating to attain good learning.

-Ascham, Roger
  The Schoolmaster,'A Preface to the Reader'.

   I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don't. After all, everybody speaks.Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

-Bainbridge, Dame Beryl Margaret
  In D L Kirkpatrick (ed) Contemporary Novelists.

Beautyand the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

-Beerbohm, Sir (Henry) Max(imilian)
Zuleika Dobson, ch.7.

A design career is a process of learning better and better what you know instinctively.

-Bellini, Mario
  In the NewYork Times, 25  Jun.

Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Acts of the  Apostles 26:24.

Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, That's a'the learning I desire.

-Burns, Robert
  'Epistle to  J. Lapraik,  An Old Scotch Bard,1  April1785', stanza13.

Reading is the basics for all learning.

-Bush, GeorgeW(alker)
  Announcing his 'Reading First' initiative in Reston, Virginia, 28 Mar.

Learning, that cobweb of the brain, Profane, erroneous, and vain.

-Butler, Samuel
  Hudibras, pt.1, canto 3, l.1339^40.

A man must serve his time to every trade Save censureöcritics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote.

-Rochdale
  English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l.63^6.

Wear your learning, like your watch in a private pocket: and donot merely pull it out and strike it, merely toshow that you have one.

-Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of
  Letter to his son, 22 Feb.

   People mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can't be alwayth a working, they an't made for it.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Mr Sleary. Hard Times, bk.3, ch.8.

Shakespeare†was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there† He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

Bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collectöso some writers are lost in their collected learning.

-Hawthorne, Nathaniel
  The American Notebooks (published1868), ch.5.

Hay hombres que de su ciencia tienen la cabeza llena; hay sabios de todas menas, mas digo, sin ser muy ducho: es mejor que aprender mucho el aprender cosas buenas. There are some men who have their heads full up with the things they know. Wise men come in all sizes, but I don't need so much sense to say

-Herna¤ n dez,Jose¤

Anti-classic art, if it may even be called an art, is merely theart oftheidle.It isthe doctrine ofthosewho desireto produce without working, to know without learning.

-Ingres,Jean Auguste Dominique
  Quoted in Henri Delaborde Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine (1870).

There is more learning in their [Chinese] languagethan in anyother, fromthe immensenumberof their characters. It is only more difficult from its rudeness, as there is more labour in hewing down a tree with a stone than with an axe.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
BOSWELL:JOHNSON:1778  Conversation, 8 May. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.3.

The most important single thing in publishing is the English sentence, and the editor who cannot contemplate it again and again with a sense of wonder has not yet gained respect for the complexity of learning.

-Jovanovich,William
  Now, Barabbas.

I've had a tough time learning how to act like a Congressman. Today I accidentally spent some of my own money.

-Kennedy,Joseph P(atrick) II
  In Newsweek, 9 Feb.

It is difficult to thinkof any circumstances where learning may be said to be impossible.

-Oakeshott, Michael Joseph
Quoted in R S Peters (ed)  TheConcept of Education (1966), ch.10, 'Learning and Teaching'.