Meaning of “Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated…”

The Renaissance, Conclusion; Project Gutenberg #2398. The line belongs to Pater’s historically controversial conclusion on experience and culture.

The Song of the Lark, Part VI, Chapter X, Project Gutenberg #44. ‘Artistic growth is... a refining of the sense of truthfulness’ is narrator reflection immediately after Harsanyi calls passion the artist's ‘open secret’ and as Thea Kronborg comes into fuller command of her mature performance. It belongs to Cather's fictional account of artistic formation and performance, not an empirical measurement of artistic development or a guarantee that all artists mature in the same way.

The Advancement of Learning, First Book, Project Gutenberg #5500, transcribed from the 1893 Cassell & Company edition. Bacon contrasts impatience of doubt with mature suspension of judgment and then sets out two ways of contemplation before saying that beginning with certainties ends in doubts while beginning with doubts can end in certainties. It remains early-modern epistemological argument rather than a modern experimental rule for scientific method.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The wording belongs to Schopenhauer’s contrast between intellectual and ordinary forms of leisure.

An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 4; third-person narration focalized through Lord Henry reflects that experience is the name people give to their mistakes.