It was the idea I urged in the second part of this book: that the world must keep one great amateur, lest we all become artists and perish.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton

It would be hard to find anything in history more ironical than the educational practices which have identified the "humanities" exclusively with a knowledge of Greek and Latin.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey

But to dismiss the subtleties of the Stoics, which I am sensible I have employed more than was necessary, let us admit of three kinds of goods; and let them really be kinds of goods, provided no regard is had to the body and to external circumstances, as entitled to the appellation of good in any other sense than because we are obliged to use them: but let those other divine goods spread themselves far in every direction, and reach the very heavens.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Fighting faults isn't easy, as I know; and a cheery word kind of gives a lift.
— from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott

Fighting faults isn't easy, as I know, and a cheery word kind of gives a lift.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Before he was nineteen, this poor shepherd boy with no chance had astonished the professors of Edinburgh by his knowledge of Greek and Latin.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden

More, although beyng much occupyed in the kynges matters, to be a teacher to hys wyfe, daughters, and sonne, fyrste in vertue, and after to knowledge of Greke and Latine.
— from The Education of Children by Desiderius Erasmus

My heart also bled when it tore itself away from all the human ties entwined about it; I, too, Cornelia, have struggled until I resisted the false allurements, and so spiritualized myself that the world became dead, and the kingdom of God a living thing to me."
— from A Twofold Life by Wilhelmine von Hillern

I put to you what I posited in an earlier course of lectures, quoting Bagehot, that while a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary to a writer of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those two languages existed.
— from On The Art of Reading by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Brit opened his eyes and moved his thin lips in some kind of greeting, and Lone sat down on the edge of a chair, feeling as miserably guilty as if he himself had brought the old man to this pass.
— from The Quirt by B. M. Bower

In the Middle Ages knowledge of Greek and Latin literatures had withdrawn itself into monasteries, and there narrowed till of secular Latin writing scarcely any knowledge remained save of Vergil (because of his supposed Messianic prophecy) and Statius, and of Greek, except Aristotle, none at all.
— from English Literature: Modern by G. H. (George Herbert) Mair

Mr. Chicholm, when a young man, went to London from Aberdeen, where he had studied at the university, and acquired a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, but no means of supporting himself.
— from The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2) by Thomas Thomson

He says that he preached the Kingdom of God, and labored in his own hired house for two years.
— from The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign 1847 edition by Joseph Bates

I therefore made little further progress in anything but classics, in which I became a tolerable proficient, and had Homer, Thucydides, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, &c., at my fingers’ ends, whilst I could scarcely demonstrate the Pons asinorum of Euclid; in fact, in those days a knowledge of Greek and Latin was considered as including everything else, and anything like a science or physics was considered of secondary consequence.
— from Autobiography of Sir John Rennie, F.R.S., Past President of the Institute of Civil Engineers Comprising the history of his professional life, together with reminiscences dating from the commencement of the century to the present time. by Rennie, John, Sir