Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
Source identified
Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.
Read & copy the quotation
“Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.”

Mary Wollstonecraft

Download image (JPG)

Source
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
Date
1787
Meaning

Meaning of “Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the…”

Good reading can develop both judgment and moral feeling, making intellectual enlargement and character formation parts of the same educational process.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), “READING,” printed page 49, Project Gutenberg #67466. “Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart” appears in Wollstonecraft’s case for carefully chosen reading that joins intellectual cultivation with moral formation; the passage remains historical educational and conduct writing.

Primary / edition source ↗

Customize your imageTen designs · Square or portrait · Preview and share
Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

BookChange and GrowthEducation Quotes About Teaching & Intellectual FormationGrowthGrowth MindsetInspirational Quotes About Hope, Courage & PossibilityKindnessLearning Quotes About Curiosity, Study & ExperienceLifeLife AdviceLife LessonsMindMindsetMotivation For LifePersonal GrowthReadingShort
Related quotations

Continue through nearby ideas

Source identified
it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.
Read & copy

“it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know it.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · The Art of Literature · 1851
Meaning & context

Learning becomes knowledge, in this account, when material has been actively reconsidered and integrated rather than merely encountered or memorized.

Source details

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.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Read & copy

“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

Francis Bacon · Of Studies · 1625
Meaning & context

Bacon distinguishes what reading, conversation, and writing each contribute to intellectual development.

Source details

Of Studies; Bacon distinguishes the intellectual uses of reading, conversation, and writing within the essay’s compact account of study and judgment.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
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.
Read & copy

“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.”

Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning · 1605
Meaning & context

Intellectual confidence can be improved by beginning with questions rather than pretending certainty too early.

Source details

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.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
So much patient perseverance could not but eventually succeed
Read & copy

“So much patient perseverance could not but eventually succeed”

Samuel Smiles · The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson · 1868
Meaning & context

Smiles describes Stephenson’s progress in arithmetic as the cumulative result of study and patient persistence rather than easy aptitude.

Source details

The Life of George Stephenson and of his Son Robert Stephenson, Chapter IV, “The Stephensons at Killingworth—Education and Self-Education of Father and Son”; represented 1868 revised edition, Project Gutenberg #46229. The excerpt is Smiles’s narration of Stephenson’s patient arithmetic study under John Wigham.

↓ Download image (JPG)

Source identified
Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?
Read & copy

“Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application?”

Confucius · The Analects of Confucius · James Legge translation
Meaning & context

Learning becomes satisfying when it is sustained through repeated application rather than treated as a single act of exposure.

Source details

The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book I opens by connecting learning with steady practice.

↓ Download image (JPG)