Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carl Friedrich Gauss

To the distracting occupations belong especially my lecture courses which I am holding this winter for the first time, and which now cost much more of my time than I like. Meanwhile I hope that the second time this expenditure of time will be much less, otherwise I would never be able to reconcile myself to it, even practical (astronomical) work must give far more satisfaction than if one brings up to B a couple more mediocre heads which otherwise would have stopped at A.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I am giving this winter two courses of lectures to three students, of which one is only moderately prepared, the other less than moderately, and the third lacks both preparation and ability. Such are the onera of a mathematical profession.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his precious time.

Agnes Smedley

Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.

Agnes Repplier

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

Agnes Repplier

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

Agnes Repplier

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

Alan K. Simpson

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

Alan K. Simpson

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.

Charles Caleb Colton

Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.

Charles Dickens

We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

Charles Dickens

I could not help wondering in my own mind....how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes - and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflections to myself.

Byron Katie

When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.

Cesare Pavese

Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

Jane Austen

She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

Jane Austen

They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

Jane Austen

Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.