英语晨读美文OfStudies

英语晨读美文OfStudies

英语晨读美文Of Studies

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their

chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament,

is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition

of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of

particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots

and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those that are learned.

To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much

for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their

rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are

perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural

plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do

give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded

in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men

admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their

own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them,

won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to

believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but

to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be

swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is,

some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but

not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence

and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and

extracts made of them bothers; but that would be only in the less

important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else

distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.

Reading make a full man; conference a ready man; and

writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had

need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have

a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much

cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men

wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtitle; natural philosophy

deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.