George Long (scholar) Quotes (1800-1879)

“It is an undoubted truth that, if a thing is not learned well, there is more harm done than good acquired.”

“I think it is a truth, and an important truth, that the fundamentals of all school teaching ought to be the same.”

“Cleanthes also connects Ethic and Politic, or the study of the principles of morals and the study of the constitution of civil society.”

“Real learning... is a thing in which the learner is not a receiver only of words written or spoken: he must be a doer.”

“A few have a great power of listening and attending, but they are only few, and this power gives them a superiority over those who cannot attend.”

“All education which is in its kind complete and good, is the means of forming character, and of making useful men and women.”

“This power of attention is that which perhaps more than any thing else distinguishes those who do great things from those who can do nothing well.”

“Epictetus and Antoninus have had readers ever since they were first printed. The little book of Antoninus has been the companion of some great men.”

“The chief business of education... is to attempt to form good habits in children, to improve the understanding, and to check the formation of bad habits.”

“Great abilities are rare, and they are often accompanied by qualities which make the abilities useless to him who has them, and even injurious to society.”

“In whatever way you who teach may manage this business, I advise you not to trust too much to the inculcation of creeds and dogmas by words written or spoken.”

“Even among the earliest Stoics, Logic or Dialectic does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy.”

“I could have made the language [in the translation of Meditations] more easy and flowing, but I have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the character of the original.”

“The doctrines of Epictetus and Antoninus are the same, and Epictetus is the best authority for the explanation of the philosophical language of Antoninus and the exposition of his opinions.”

“A prudent governor will not roughly oppose even the superstitions of his people, and though he may wish they were wiser, he will know that he cannot make them so by offending their prejudices.”

“What must we do with these sciences in schools—I mean the elementary part of them? for... the amount which we can teach in a school to the ordinary kind of boys, that is the very great majority, is not much.”

“I have heard it maintained that it is always the teacher's fault if a boy does not learn, even a stupid and idle boy; but I leave the decision of this matter to the "communis sensus," the common intelligence of mankind.”

“Epictetus addressed himself to his hearers in a continuous discourse and in a familiar and simple manner. Antoninus wrote down his reflections for his own use only, in short unconnected paragraphs, which are often obscure.”

“The emperor Antoninus was a practical moralist. From his youth he followed a laborious discipline, and though his high station placed him above all want or the fear of it, he lived as frugally and temperately as the poorest philosopher.”

“Every man who observes, must have seen what bad listeners most people are. Inability to attend carefully to what is spoken is a great defect, which leads to blunders, misrepresentation, and sometimes to quarrels.”

“I am not a man of science, and I do not wish to be thought so. If I were, I would rather not have the name. There are men, named men of science, for whom I have great respect; there are many for whom I have no respect.”

“The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy, Physic, Ethic, and Logic. ...It appears, however, that this division was made before Zeno's time and acknowledged by Plato. ...Logic is not synonymous with our term Logic in the narrower sense of that word.”

“The emperor says that life is smoke, a vapour, and St. James in his Epistle is of the same mind; that the world is full of envious, jealous, malignant people, and a man might be well content to get out of it.”

“Prometheus... found the human race in a pitiable condition. They saw, he says, but they really saw not: they heard, but they understood not: they were like the phantoms of our dreams, and their labour was useless and unprofitable.”