“I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.”
The Observer, 19 April, 1998, p. 23
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.”
The Observer, 19 April, 1998, p. 23
“What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: ... education should try to lessen the obstacles, diminish the friction, invigorate the energy, and should train minds to react, not at haphazard, but by choice, on the lines of force that attract their world. What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn. Throughout human history the waste of mind has been appalling, and, as this story is meant to show, society has conspired to promote it. No doubt the teacher is the worst criminal, but the world stands behind him and drags the student from his course. The moral is stentorian. Only the most energetic, the most highly fitted, and the most favored have overcome the friction or the viscosity of inertia, and these were compelled to waste three-fourths of their energy in doing it.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
Source: The Complete Poems
“I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.”
Mr. Wharton in Ch. IV
Esther: A Novel (1884)
Source: Exploring the Crack In the Cosmic Egg (1974), p. 38