Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Learning can be achieved through self-study and exploration, not just formal education.
This quote by Leo Tolstoy emphasizes the value of independent learning and the vast resources available in public libraries. It suggests that genuine knowledge and understanding come from dedicating oneself to reading and self-discovery, rather than relying solely on structured lectures or formal institutions.
Themes
LearningLibrariesSelf-StudyEducationKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about lifelong learning, one might say, 'As Tolstoy advised, instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, let's immerse ourselves in our local libraries.'
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes βPierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
Our higher education system is one of the things that makes America exceptional. There's no place else that has the assets we do when it comes to higher education. People from all over the world aspire to come here and study here. And that is a good thing.
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I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.
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To read great books does not mean one becomes βbookishβ; it means that something of the terrible insight of Dostoyevsky, of the richly-charged imagination of Shakespeare, of the luminous wisdom of Goethe, actually passes into the personality of the reader; so that in contact with the chaos of ordinary life certain free and flowing outlines emerge, like the forms of some classic picture, endowing both people and things with a grandeur beyond what is visible to the superficial glance.
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A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
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I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal, state, and local levels.
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In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer - in any language - would reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.
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