Roger Ascham Quotes

As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

It is costly wisdom that is brought by experience.

In mine opinion, love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning.

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

The least learned, for the most part, have been always most ready to write.

Charles V used to say that "the more languages a man knew, he was so many more times a man." Each new form of human speech introduces one into a new world of thought and life. So in some degree is it in traversing other continents and mingling with other races. As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

He that will write well in any tongue must follow this counsel of Aristotle: to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do.

There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

To be rash is to be bold without shame and without skill.

To laugh, to lie, to flatter, to face: Four ways in court to win man's grace.

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry.

Young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning.

Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall.

To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.

A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little.

Marke all Mathematicall heades, which be onely and wholy bent to those sciences, how solitarie they be themselues, how vnfit to liue with others, & how vnapte to serue in the world.

For [the] quick in wit and light in manners be either seldom troubled or very soon weary, in carrying a very heavy purse.

Italianate Englishmen are incarnate devils ... for they first lustfully condemn God, then scornfully mock his word, and also spitefully hate and hurt all the well wishers thereof.... They count as fables the holy mysteries of religion.

It is good manners, not rank, wealth, or beauty, that constitute the real lay.

A man, groundly learned already, may take much profit himself in using by epitome to draw other men’s works, for his own memory sake, into short room.

He hazardeth much who depends for his learning on experience. An unhappy master, he that is only made wise by many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant, that is neither rich nor wise till he has been bankrupt. By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had--yea, and that among very wise men--to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children.

Mathematical Mark all mathematical heads, which be only and wholly bent to those sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, and how unapt to serve in the world.