Quotes about studying
page 4

“The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Fear, Understanding, Sense

“We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)”

Edward Said book Culture and Imperialism

Source: Culture and Imperialism

“When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.”

William Gibson book Zero History

Source: Zero History

“The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Men, Truth

“I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

School, Food

“A geisha has studied a man's moods and his seasons. She fusses and he blooms.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Mood, Season

“That I was not suited to commerce or academic study in no way proves that I should also be unfit to be a painter.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Way

“I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Thinking, Reading

“Clary?” Jace tilted his head to the side, studying her face. “You do—you still love me, don’t you?”

“I love Jace Lightwood,” she said. “I don’t know who you are.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love

“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu. III: "Le Confiteor de l'artiste" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Petits_Po%C3%A8mes_en_prose_-_III._Le_Confiteor_de_l%27artiste Le Spleen de Paris (1862) Source: Twenty Prose Poems

Beauty

“The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Death of Ivan Ilych

Life, Men

“… she studied his clothes, his top hat. “And you’ve just come from Parliament? How are you finding that?”

“It’s much like piracy. You tell your enemies that if they don’t fall in line, you’ll leave them to die.”

Meljean Brook (1977)

Source: The Iron Duke

Clothes

“I think if you study--if you learn too much of what others have done, you may tend to take the same direction as everybody else.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

Thinking, Learning

“It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 39
Context: I’ve always been interested in foreign relations. It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.

History, Understanding

“You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Soul

“But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Night

“The more we study, we the more discover / Our ignorance.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Calderón, “Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso” fourth speech of Cyprian, as translated by Shelley, found in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Scott, William B, ed. https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofp1934shel/page/577 Misattributed

“To see truth as truth, we don't need a lot of study. It's not complicated. What we need is pure observation. An open mind and fresh eyes will serve us well.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

Truth

“A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Learning, Time

“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.”

Edward Hallett Carr What Is History?

Source: What Is History?

“It's your fiction that interests me. Your studies of the interplay of human motives and emotion.”

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot

Motivation

“You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Source: The Best of Edward Abbey

Light

“Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn't relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Anger

“My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Books, World, Sadness, School

“They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him….”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Sadness, Reading

“If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Personality

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Source: Why I Am An Agnostic and Other Essays

Death, Wisdom, God, Fear

“I don't feel stupid, just inadequate. After three years of studying the law, I'm very much aware of how little I know.”

John Grisham book The Rainmaker

Source: The Rainmaker

Stupidity, Law, Feeling

“I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Firefight

People, Youth, Way, Painting

“There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker

Life

“I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.”
Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Time, Sea

“What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25

Hunger, Books, World, Understanding

“Anything we need to know, we can learn it from a book. Reading, careful study, a little practice, and we’re throwing knives expertly, overhauling engines, speaking Esperanto like natives.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Books, Learning, Reading

“A recent police study found that you're much more likely to get shot by a fat cop if you run.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

“Curran struck at my wrist. His fingers were cat-quick, but I had spent my life honing my reflexes, and he missed.
“Well, look at that.” I studied my free wrist. “Denied. Good-bye”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Life, Cats

“She studied my face for a long minute. "Are you going to help my mom?" It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren't that simple, that some questions don't have simple answers--or any answer at all?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Moms, Question, Help

“True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

World, Beauty, Science

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

Truth, Error, Thinking, Suffering

“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

People

“The study of doctrine and the teaching of doctrine will change behavior more than the study of behavior will change behavior.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

Behavior, Change

“Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Source: Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

“The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Source: Summa Contra Gentiles

Love, Men, God, Truth

“A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.”

- Chinese proverb”

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) American writer

“I like reading in a pub rather than a library or study, as it's generally much easier to get a drink.”

Pete McCarthy (1951–2004) British travel writer

Source: McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland

Drink, Reading

“It's okay," my husband said, shuffling toward his study. "I bought an electric-powered chain saw with a plug-in cord so if I run away fast enough, you can only chase me so far.”

Laurie Notaro American writer

Source: I Love Everybody

“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Understanding

“Joel, lad, school is about learning to learn. If you don't practice studying things you don't like, then you'll have a very hard time in life.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Rithmatist

Life, School, Learning, Time

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Change, Past

“Study is the child of silence and mystery.”

Henri Murger (1822–1861) novelist and poet from France

Source: The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter: Scenes de la Vie de Boheme

Silence

“I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Problem, Sleep, Time, Fight

“Reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.”

Joe Haldeman book The Forever War

Source: The Forever War (1974), Chapter 10 (p. 46)
Context: Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there... the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

Reality

“Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Variant: Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 9-12.

Dreams, Home, Flowers

“No wonder studies show that women's intellectual self-esteem tends to go down as years of education go up. We have been studying our own absence.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Women, Education

“Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Imagination

“It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Source: Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)

Truth, Lie

“Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of”

Manuel Puig (1932–1990) Argentine author and screenwriter

Reality, Reading

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Truth, Art, Reality

“A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Art, Drawing

“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

Learning, Reading, Personality

“It's Thursday afternoon, and we have sports. These are the choices for the girls: watching an invitational cricket game; studying in one of the classrooms; or watching the senior rugby league. As you can imagine, I'm torn.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Imagination, Girl, Game, Sport

“I am sending back the key
that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me
I am sending back the key;
in his eye's darkroom I can see
my X-rayed heart, dissected body:
I am sending back the key
that let me into bluebeard s study.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Love, Making love, Heart

“There are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now when they study this civilization: The Constitution, Jazz music, and Baseball. These are the 3 most beautiful things this culture's ever created.”

Gerald Early (1952) American poet

Beauty, Music

“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Secret, History

“The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)
Source: Che Guevara Talks to Young People
Context: The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study. Education should be the daily bread of the people of Cuba.

Money, Children, Education

“Never tire to study. And to teach to others”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“Did you say something Macey?' I asked, but she cut me a look that could kill. She reached into her bag, ripped off a sliver of Evapopaper, and scribbled:
'Can we study tonight? (Tell anyone, and I'll kill you in you sleep!)”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Sleep

“You want to play video games twenty-four hours a day?"
"Or watch. I just want to not be me. Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Game, Sleep

“She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face, she spoke
"Is it really you?"
Is it from your cheek, she thought, that I took the seed?
The man nodded.
His heart wobbled and he held tighter to the branches.
It is.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Heart

“The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.”

Jean Webster book Dear Enemy

Source: Dear Enemy

Men, World, Boy

“A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

Life, Art

“The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it.”

Lewis Grizzard (1946–1994) American journalist

Life, Way, Dead

“Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

World, Way, Selfishness

“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Grass

“How do people stay in love, anyway? Is it a choice? Or is it like those plants we studied in biology that mutate into something new and totally different but are still part of the same plant family?”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Love, People, Family, Parting

“it’s only by studying the mistakes of the past,” Lucien
said mildly, “that we can even have a future”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Insatiable

Past, Future

“Study nothing except in the knowledge that you already knew it. Worship nothing except in adoration of your true self. And fear nothing except in the certainty that you are your enemy's begetter and its only hope of healing.”

Clive Barker book Imajica

Source: Imajica

Fear, Hope, Knowledge

“We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Nature, Reality, Change

“But I intend to enjoy the weeks I have left with you to the fullest. Because I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble Gets Hitched

Time, Future

“Kat felt her heart beat faster, adrenaline pumping through her veins, and she knew he was right. She studied him for a long time. "Do you believe in curses, Hale?"

He looked at her. "I believe in you.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Time, Heart

“The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

Way, Intelligence, Knowledge

“I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened".”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

People, Reading

“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“We study there a lot because… what other choice does society give us, right? It's Starbucks or death, sometimes.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

Death

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15
Context: Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Way, Learning

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Truth, Faith, Search, Understanding

“Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Business

“So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth?”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”

Unfaithfulness, Faith, Way, Question