Quotes about Learning

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all.

We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!

For he who knows does not speak, He who speaks does not know" (12) And "The Wise Man gives instruction Without the use of speech." (13)

THE MONASTERY IS A SCHOOL—A SCHOOL IN WHICH WE learn from God how to be happy.

The function of a university is to teach a [person] how to drink tea, not because anything is important, but because it is usual to drink tea, or for that matter anything else under the sun. And whatever you do, every act, however small, can teach you everything, provided you see who is acting." ? Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton On Prayer

The other loan was that of a book. The Headmaster came along, one day, and gave me a little blue book of poems. I looked at the name on the back. "Gerard Manley Hopkins." I had never heard of him. But I opened the book, and read the "Starlight Night" and the Harvest poem and the most lavish and elaborate early poems. I noticed that the man was a Catholic and a priest and, what is more, a Jesuit.

Therefore beware of the contemplative who says that theology is all straw before he has ever bothered to read any.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.