A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it.

If you would know what nobody knows, read what everybody reads, just one year afterwards.

To be proud of knowledge is to be blind with light.

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency

To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.