Roger Ascham Quotes

#1. To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.

Roger Ascham

#2. Italianate Englishmen are incarnate devils ... for they first lustfully condemn God, then scornfully mock his word, and also spitefully hate and hurt all the well wishers thereof ... They count as fables the holy mysteries of religion.

Roger Ascham

#3. It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience.

Roger Ascham

#4. 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 short room.

Roger Ascham

#5. It is good manners, not rank, wealth, or beauty, that constitute the real lay.

Roger Ascham

#6. To laugh, to lie, to flatter, to face:
Four ways in court to win man's grace.

Roger Ascham

#7. Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

Roger Ascham

#8. As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

Roger Ascham

#9. A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

Roger Ascham

#10. The least learned, for the most part, have been always most ready to write.

Roger Ascham

#11. Marke all Mathematicall heades, which be onely and wholy bent to those sciences, how solitarie they be themselues, how vnfit to liue with others, & how vnapte to serue in the world.

Roger Ascham

#12. In mine opinion, love is fitter than fear, gentleness better than beating, to bring up a child rightly in learning.

Roger Ascham

#13. It is costly wisdom that is brought by experience.

Roger Ascham

#14. Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall.

Roger Ascham

#15. For [the] quick in wit and light in manners be either seldom troubled or very soon weary, in carrying a very heavy purse.

Roger Ascham

#16. He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Roger Ascham

#17. 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.

Roger Ascham

#18. By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

Roger Ascham

#19. I remember when I was young, in the north, they went to the grammar school little children: they came from thence great lubbers: always learning, and little profiting: learning without book everything, understanding within the book little or nothing.

Roger Ascham

#20. In our fathers' time nothing was read but books of feigned chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and bawdry.

Roger Ascham

#21. To be rash is to be bold without shame and without skill.

Roger Ascham

#22. Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little.

Roger Ascham

#23. Young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning.

Roger Ascham

#24. Let the master praise him, and say, 'Here ye do well.' For, I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

Roger Ascham

#25. Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world.

Roger Ascham