Roger Ascham Quotes

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

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

It is costly wisdom that is brought by experience.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I remember when I was young, in the north, they went to the grammar school little children: they came from thence great lubbers: always learning, and little profiting: learning without book everything, understanding within the book little or nothing.