Quotes about Knowledge

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.

Attempts at description are stupid. Who can all at once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances.

There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities.

But something she yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men kept-the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon? Thus

I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone.

But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

Who knows that about anybody?

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

T]he Meyricks, whose various knowledge had been acquired by the irregular foraging to which clever girls have usually been reduced...

She did not want to deck herself with knowledge—to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug; but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.