George Long Quotes

This is his [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus'] conclusion (II. 17): "What then is that which is able to conduct a man? One thing and only one, Philosophy. But this consists in keeping the divinity within a man free from violence and unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man's doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that happens and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence he himself came; and, finally, waiting for death with a cheerful mind as being nothing else than a dissolution of the elements of which every living being is compounded. But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and dissolution of all the elements [himself]? for it is according to nature; and nothing is evil that is according to nature."

Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity" (IX. 16).

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

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.

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.

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.

He [Marcus Aurelius] has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life.

He [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus] advises us to examine well all the impressions on our minds and to form a right judgment of them, to make just conclusions, and to inquire into the meanings of words, and so far to apply Dialectic, but he has no attempt at any exposition of Dialectic, and his philosophy is in substance purely moral and practical. ...an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly employed as a means towards establishing his Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles.

If we want a subject that is nearer, I think botany is the best. I do not mean classification of plants. I mean their structure, growth, propagation, parts, and uses. ...I know no other thing which presents the same facilities in the way of material, and the opportunities of seeing and handling it. I have heard that a great botanist, who lived in our time, used to teach some village children to gather and examine plants.

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

Could not a boy be taught the elements of astronomy at the sole cost of using his eyes and his brain; taught slowly, certainly, and not wearied with too much at once? Some would learn more than others; but all would learn something. This is real science, real knowledge, which will make a boy wiser, and probably better too. He will learn to observe carefully, and not to be deceived, as we sometimes are, by appearances.

If anything is well taught—I will take Latin for example—a boy is easily led to see, indeed he cannot help seeing, certain resemblances in words. The first part of words may differ from one another, but the tails or endings may be the same; and a boy easily learns to observe these like endings and to see also that they add to or qualify the meaning of the words to which they are attached. This fact appears in our own language, and the observation of likeness and unlikeness of this kind may be taught in the humblest schools. It is a very potent method of forming boys to observe, to distinguish and to classify.

I have said nothing about religious teaching as one of the means of forming a good character. ...I, who am not a teacher of religion, do not presume to say how it should be taught, so taught as to be practical. If you merely teach dogmas dogmatically, you are not teaching in the sense in which I understand teaching... and learning... does not consist merely in knowing: it is not learning unless there is some corresponding doing.

Those are useful games which exercise the hand and the eye at the same time, and thus do part of the business which the schoolmaster is too ignorant or too learned to do. Games are also played according to certain rules, and thus unruly boys are taught to respect order and discipline even in their play. I hope I shall be excused if I say that boys' play is sometimes the best thing that they do at school. But let there be reasonable limits to it. Moderation in all things is the golden precept; let there be excess in nothing, not even in book learning.

I am daily more amazed at the ignorance of grown-up men and women, called gentlemen and gentlewomen, who, with so many means at their command, are little better than Hottentots in disguise. ...These people may read a newspaper, which is the best thing that they do read... But the chief reading of these silly people is stories, tales, novels, and works of some kind of fiction, and not even the best works of the kind. They are very much in the state of those who commit excess in strong drink.