“Tis grand! 'tis solemn! 'tis an education of itself to look upon!”

The Roxburghe Ballads (c. 1630), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Act V, scene iii
Love for Love (1695)

Page 122
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

(19th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.2
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

No. 2, The Look of Love
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792), Several Questions Answered

Tis Time, My Friend, l. 1-5 (1834).

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

&quot; Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent http://www.bartleby.com/126/23.html&quot; <br class="br">Poems (1817)

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 1
Context: The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume that there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.
Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of any education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.
Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and planes. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long?