“All true histories contain instruction”
Source: Agnes Grey (1847), Ch. I : The Parsonage
Context: All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend.
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Anne Brontë148
British novelist and poet 1820–1849Related quotes
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
This is not by Churchill, but a paraphrase of Churchill quoting Arthur James Balfour in Great Contemporaries (1937): 'there were some things that were true, and some things that were trite; but what was true was trite, and what was not trite was not true' .
Misattributed
Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist
Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 10, What Have We Learned?, p. 164.
“History proves nothing because it contains everything.”
Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay
A Short History of Decay (1949)
“Oh, be wise, Thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
Lines (1795)
“It was true of my generation, that the movies were terribly vivid and instructive.”
John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic
Salon interview (2000)
Context: It was true of my generation, that the movies were terribly vivid and instructive. There were all kinds of things you learned. Like the 19th century novels, you saw how other social classes lived — especially the upper classes. So in a funny way, they taught you manners almost. But also moral manners. The gallantry of a Gary Cooper or an Errol Flynn or Jimmy Stewart. It was ethical instruction of a sort that the church purported to be giving you, but in a much less digestible form. Instead of these remote, crabbed biblical verses, you had contemporary people acting out moral dilemmas. Just the grace, the grace of those stars — not just the dancing stars, but the way they all moved with a certain grace. All that sank deep into my head, and my soul.
“Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Max Müller, India: What Can India Teach Us? (1883), p. 15 http://books.google.com/books?id=pIVDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA15&dq=%22most+valuable+and+most+instructive+materials+in+the+history+of+man+are+treasured+up+in+India%22 <br class="br">Misattributed
Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
Book I (1668), Dedication "To Monseigneur the Dauphin".
Fables (1668–1679)
“True instruction is this: —to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does.”
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: True instruction is this: —to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does. And how does it come to pass? As the Disposer has disposed it. Now He has disposed that there should be summer and winter, and plenty and dearth, and vice and virtue, and all such opposites, for the harmony of the whole. (26).