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“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”
Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.
Source note: The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The preceding sentence says a person must first learn something before turning it over in the mind.
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“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
Bacon distinguishes what reading, conversation, and writing each contribute to intellectual development.
Source note: Of Studies; Bacon distinguishes the intellectual uses of reading, conversation, and writing within the essay’s compact account of study and judgment.
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“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.
Source note: The Advancement of Learning, Book I; Bacon contrasts premature certainty with an inquiry willing to begin from doubt and work toward firmer knowledge.
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“a man may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered.”
Accumulated information is distinguished from understanding: Schopenhauer values knowledge that has been actively compared, connected and reconsidered over a larger but unprocessed store.
Source note: The Art of Literature, section “On Thinking for Oneself,” T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10714. The library analogy immediately precedes the sentence.
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“by the constant growth of insight and knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming work of art, will acquire a consistency, a permanent intensity, a unity which becomes ever more and more complete”
The image treats intellectual development as cumulative craftsmanship: insight and knowledge gradually produce greater coherence instead of appearing as a single finished achievement.
Source note: The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The simile compares a developing intellectual life with a slowly formed work of art.
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“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
Thoreau treats reading as potentially transformative: a book can mark a genuine before-and-after point when it gives language to questions a reader has struggled to express.
Source note: Walden, chapter “Reading,” in the discussion of books that can reveal new possibilities and answer enduring questions.