May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?

-Austen,Jane
  Pride and Prejudice, ch.14.

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many booksthere isno end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes12:12.

Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.

-Bible (NewTestament)
  Thessalonians 4:11.

A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.1.

Cum studio bene vivendi semper conjunxi studium bene dicendi. I have always combined the study of how to live well with the study of how to speak well.

-Gerbert later Pope Sylvester II
  Letter to Ebrard,  Abbot of  Tours.

Delegimus certum otium studiorum, quam incertum negotium bellorum. We have opted for the certain leisure of study, rather than the uncertain business of war.

-Gerbert later Pope Sylvester II
  Letter to Monk Raymond.

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

-Hart, Moss
  Act One.

The proper study of mankind is books. See Pope 660:16.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
CromeYellow, ch.28.

All creative people hate mathematics. It's the most uncreative subject you can study.

-Issigonis, SirAlec (AlexanderArnold Constantine)
Recalled on his death. Quoted in The Australian, 5 Oct1988.

The sociologists of knowledge have been among those raising high the banner which reads: 'We don't know if what we say is true, but it is at least significant.' The sociologists and psychologists engaged in the study of publicopinionand mass communications aremost often found in the opposed camp of the empiricists† 'We don't know that what we say is particularly significant, but it is at least true.'

-Merton, Robert King
  Social Theory and Social Structure (rev. edn), pt.3, introduction.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.

-Miller, Henry Valentine
  The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,'The Soul of  Anaesthesia'.

No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey.

-Mills, C(harles) Wright
  The Sociological Imagination, ch.1.

Thus you see, Sir, that these people are not so unpolished as we represent them.'Tis true, their magnificence is of a different taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opinion, they have a right notion of life. They consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while we are tormenting our brains with some scheme of politics, or studying some sciencetowhichwe canneverattain, or, if we do, cannot persuade other people to set that value upon it we do ourselves† We die or grow old before we can reap the fruit of our labours.Considering what short-lived weak animals men are, is there any study so beneficial as the study of present pleasure?

-Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley ne¤  e Pierrepoint
c.1716  Collected in Lord Wharncliffe (ed)  The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1837).

   If the study of all these sciences which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.

-Plato
Republic, bk.7, 531d (translated by G M A Grube, revised by C D C Reeve).

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle 2, l.1^12.

It is only in science, I find, that we can get outside ourselves. It's realistic, and to a great degree verifiable, and it has this tremendous stage on which it plays. I have the same feelingöto a certain degreeöabout some religious expressions†but only to a certain degree. For me, the proper study of mankind is science, which also means that the proper study of mankind is man.

-Rabi, Isidor Isaac
Quoted inJeremy Bernstein Experiencing Science (1978).

The essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science, is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it onlyaccepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, there is no reason for rejecting them.

-Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl
  The Problems of Philosophy, ch.14.

   But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows† Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, 'Fool,'said my muse to me; 'look in thy heart, and write.'

-Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway
Astrophel and Stella, sonnet1.

I have lived long enough in the world to know that the safety of a Minister lies in his having the approbation of this House.Former Ministers neglected that and thereforethey fell; I have always made it my first study to obtain it, and therefore I hope to stand.

-Walpole, Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Orford
  Speech, House of Commons, 21 Nov.