C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Knowledge
Knowledge is power.
Knowledge is the parent of love; wisdom, love itself.
One cannot know everything.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
I take all knowledge to be my province.
Half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
Knowledge is folly unless grace guide it.
He who knows much has many cares.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless.
Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.
Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance.
Knowledge is our ultimate good.
Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
The only jewel which will not decay is knowledge.
Knowledge descries; wisdom applies.
Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.
Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Knowledge exists to be imparted.
Knowledge is boundless,—human capacity, limited.
Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.
Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
He that increaseth knowledge increases sorrow.
He who binds his soul to knowledge steals the key of heaven.
All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.
Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
What we know here is very little, but what we are ignorant of is immenses.
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
Our knowledge is our power, God our strength.
Knowledge is like money,—the more a man gets, the more he craves.
Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.
Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.
A mind full of knowledge is a mind that never fails.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.
I envy no man that knows more than my self, but pity them that know.
Let no knowledge satisfy but that which lifts above the world, which weans from the world, which makes the world a footstool.
That jewel knowledge is great riches, which is not plundered by kinsmen, nor carried off by thieves, nor decreased by giving.
Knowledge is not happiness, and science but an exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.
Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for,—studied for,—thought for,—and, more than all, it must be prayed for.
Imparting knowledge, is only lighting other men’s candle at our lamp, without depriving ourselves of any flame.
Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.
Knowledge partakes of infinity; it widens with our capacities: the higher we mount in it, the vaster and more magnificent are the prospects it stretches out before us.
Those only who know little, can be said to know anything. The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt.
The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process.
Knowledge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men’s estate.
The mind of man is this world’s true dimension; and knowledge is the measure of the mind.
Knowledge has its boundary line, where it abuts on ignorance; on the outside of that boundary line are ignorance and miracles; on the inside of it are science and no miracles.
There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.
Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure therein it is put to keep.
That learning which thou gettest by thy own observation and experience, is far beyond that which thou gettest by precept; as the knowledge of a traveler exceeds that which is got by reading.
The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
Knowledge is leagued with the universe, and findeth a friend in all things; but ignorance is everywhere a stranger, unwelcome; ill at ease and out of place.
As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.
Knowledge will not be acquired without pains and application. It is troublesome and deep digging for pure waters; but when once you come to the spring, they rise up and meet you.
Knowledge always desires increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.
Man often acquires just so much knowledge as to discover his ignorance, and attains so much experience as to regret his follies, and then dies.
Then I began to think, that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.
He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his own; and he who profits of a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with.
What is all knowledge, too, but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion, are essential materials?
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing, but that it is the external sign of an internal deficiency.
It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power: all its ends become means; all its attainments help to new conquests.
Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea?
The sure foundations of the State are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue’s sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.
A Persian philosopher, being asked by what method he had acquired much knowledge, answered, “By not being prevented by shame from asking questions where I was ignorant.”
Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law’s hand upon the jewelry of our minds.
Early knowledge is very valuable capital with which to set forth in life. It gives one an advantageous start. If the possession of knowledge has a given value at fifty, it has a much greater value at twenty-five; for there is the use of it for twenty-five of the most important years of your life; and it is worth more than a hundred per cent interest. Indeed, who can estimate the interest of knowledge? Its price is above rubies.
There is nothing so charming as the knowledge of literature; of that branch of literature, I mean, which enables us to discover the infinity of things, the immensity of Nature, the heavens, the earth, and the seas; this is that branch which has taught us religion, moderation, magnanimity, and that has rescued the soul from obscurity; to make her see all things above and below, first and last, and between both; it is this that furnishes us wherewith to live well and happily, and guides us to pass our lives without displeasure and without offence.
Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vanity, and power a pageant; but knowledge is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in fame, unlimited in space, and infinite in duration. In the performance of its sacred offices, it fears no danger, spares no expense, looks in the volcano, dives into the ocean, perforates the earth, wings its flight into the skies, explores sea and land, contemplates the distant, examines the minute, comprehends the great, ascends to the sublime—no place too remote for its grasp, no height too exalted for its reach.