Quotes about Learning

It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best.

The sanctification of your studies is when they are devoted to God and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.

Make careful choice of the books which you read. Let the Holy Scriptures ever have the pre-eminence; and next [to] them the solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the Scriptures.

All that are upright are not equally fitted for the work, and many that are learned, judicious, and more able to teach the riper sort, are yet less able to condescend to the ignorant, and so convincingly and fervently to rouse up the secure, as some that are below them in other qualifications; and many that are able in both respects, have a barren people; and the ablest have found by experience that God hath sometimes blessed the labours of a stranger to that which their own hath not done.

Convince them what a contradiction it is to be a Christian and yet to refuse to learn. For what is a Christian but a disciple of Christ, and how can he be his disciple if he refuses to be taught by him? He who refuses to be taught by his ministers refuses to be taught by Christ. He will not come down from heaven again to teach them by his own mouth, but he has appointed his ministers to keep school and to teach those under him.

Brethren, experience will teach you that men are not made learned or wise without hard study, unwearied labors, and experience.

Some desire to know merely for the sake of knowing, and that is shameful curiosity. Some desire to know that they may sell their knowledge, and that too is shameful. Some desire to know for reputation's sake, and that is shameful vanity. But there are some who desire to know that they may edify others, and that is praiseworthy; and there are some who desire to know that they themselves may be edified, and that is wise.

A sure indication of a successful leader is the collective and consistent testimony of subordinates who are grateful for what they learned and how they grew while they worked under that leader.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it "conversion" or "repentance.

Try to say that: "I don't know anything". We used to call it "tabula rasa" in Latin. Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know. We have to pray for the grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "I want to see".

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.