欧洲文化入门

Not the truth of which a man is - or believes himself to be - possessed, but the sincere effort he has made to reach it, make the worth of a man. For not through the possession, but through the investigation, of truth does he develop those energies in which alone consists his evergrowing perfection. Possession makes the mind stagnant, indolent, proud. If God held enclosed in His right hand all truth, and in His left hand simply the ever-moving impulse toward truth, although with the condition that I should eternally err, and said to me, 'Choose!' I should humbly bow before His left hand, and say, 'Father, give!' Pure truth is for Thee alone. (Lessing: Samtline Schriften)

Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought: His knowledge measured to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. (An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope)

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. -Alexander Pope

Four years later he took his degree, and became a mathematic teacher. But Newton was not a very successful teacher. It is said that few students went to his lectures and fewer could understand him. Sometimes he had so few auditors that he read his lectures to the wall.