Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Roger Ascham

For all this good propriety of words and pureness of phrases in Terence, you must not follow him always in placing of them.

Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little; even as twenty to one fall into sickness rather by over-much fulness than by any lack.

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.

The readiest way to entangle the mind with false doctrine is first to entice the will to wanton living.

Corrupt manners in living breed false judgment in doctrine: sin and fleshliness bring forth sects and heresies.

Nothing hath more dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning, than care in making of Latin.

To follow rather the Goths in rhyming than the Greeks in true versifying were even to eat acorns with swine when we may freely eat wheat bread among men.

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 shorter room.

Bring his style from all loose grossness to such firm fastness in Latin, as in Demosthenes.

This book advisedly read, and diligently followed but one year at home, would do more good than three years’ travel abroad.

Virgil and Horace, spying the unperfectness in Ennius and Plautus, by true imitation of Homer and Euripides, brought poetry to perfection.

Quick wits commonly be in desire new-fangled; in purpose unconstant; bold with any person; busy in every matter; soothing such as be present, nipping any that is absent.

Quick wits are more quick to enter speedily than able to pierce far: like sharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned.

A wit quick without lightness, sharp without brittleness, desirous of good things without newfangleness, diligent in painful things without wearisomeness.

Over-much quickness of wit, either given by nature or sharpened by study, doth not commonly bring greatest learning, best manners, or happiest life in the end.

A wit in youth not over dull, heavy, knotty, and lumpish, but hard, tough, and though somewhat staffish, both for learning and whole course of living proveth always best.

Quick wits be in desire new-fangled; in purpose, unconstant; light to promise anything, ready to forget everything, both benefit and injury, and thereby neither fast to friend nor fearful to foe.

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. They say nay in word, but they do so in deed. For to the one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by year, and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for he suffereth them to have tame and well-ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children; and, therefore, in the end, they find more pleasure in their horse than comfort in their children.

I know divers noble personages, and many worthy gentlemen of England, whom all the syren songs of Italy could never untwine from the mast of God’s word; nor no inchantment of vanity overturn them from the fear of God and love of honesty.

But I know as many, or mo, and some, sometime my dear friends, (for whose sake I hate going into that country the more,) who, parting out of England fervent in the love of Christ’s doctrine, and well furnished with the fear of God, returned out of Italy worse transformed than ever was any in Circe’s court. I know divers, that went out of England men of innocent life, men of excellent learning, who returned out of Italy, not only with worse manners, but also with less learning; neither so willing to live orderly, nor yet so hable to speak learnedly, as they were at home, before they went abroad.