[18]
If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge.1 What you have come to know, preserve by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge; for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.
1 Sandys quotes from Ascham's Scholemaster : “Isocrates did cause to be written at the entrie of his schole, in golden letters, this golden sentence, ἐὰν ᾖς φιλομαθής, ἔσῃ πολυμαθής, which excellentlie said in Greek, is thus rudelie in English, ‘If thous lovest lerning, thou shalt attayne to moch learning.’” The words were in fact inscribed “in golden letters” over the portal to Shrewsbury School.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
