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They who study mathematiks only to fix their minds, and render them the steadyer to apply to all other things, as there are many who profess to do, are as wise as those who think by rowing boats, to learn to swim.
--
Prose Observations (Oxford: 1979), p. 4.

 

Samuel(poetButler

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To work is to transform or move things or creatures in ways that will render them more useful or more beautiful; it is also to study the laws governing these transformations, formulate them or apply them.

 

Andre Maurois

 

High above the lake a bomber flies.
From the rowing boats
Children look up, women, an old man. From a distance
They appear like young starlings, their beaks
Wide open for food.

 

Bertolt Brecht

 

Epops: Yet, certainly, the wise learn many things from their enemies; for caution preserves all things. From a friend you could not learn this, but your foe immediately obliges you to learn it. For example, the states have learned from enemies, and not from friends, to build lofty walls, and to possess ships of war. And this lesson preserves children, house, and possessions.
Chorus [leader]: It is useful, as it appears to me, to hear their arguments first; for one might learn some wisdom even from one's foes.
(tr. Hickie 1853, vol. 1, p. 322; l. 375 identical in SEA 1838, p. 236, and in Bartlett 1968, p. 91 or Archive.org)

 

Aristophanes

 

I keep my mind on it. That's the whole trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second. If I think of anything else for a flash, I'm gone, done for. But at the same time, one can take things in — with another part of your brain, maybe. It's different from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive. There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience.

 

Willa Cather

 

I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of the Latin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth as unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind, learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I had taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch in the serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men the ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men have always had to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I have had to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. The teachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would not even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer follow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle the boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable poet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in the boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the right to adore him already.

 

Henri Barbusse