education

See Also: KNOWLEDGE

1. Alumni are like the wake of a ship; they spread out and ultimately disappear, but not until they have made a few waves —Anon
2. Colleges are like old-age homes; except for the fact that more people die in colleges —Bob Dylan
3. Education begins, like charity, at home —Susan Ferraro, New York Times/Hers, March 26, 1987

   The charity comparison has been effectively linked with other subjects.

   See Also: PATRIOTISM, PEACE, REFORM, SENSE

4. Education, like neurosis, begins at home —Milton R. Sapirstein
5. Education, like politics, is a rough affair, and every instructor has to shut his eyes and hold his tongue as though he were a priest —Henry Adams
6. Getting educated is like getting measles; you have to go where the measles is —Abraham Flexner
7. He was like an empty bucket waiting to be filled [with knowledge] —William Diehl
8. He who teaches a child is like one who writes on paper; but he who teaches old people is like one who writes on blotted paper —The Talmud
9. Human beings, like plants, can be twisted into strange shapes if their training begins early enough and is vigilantly supervised. They will accept their deformation as the natural state of affairs and even take pride in it, as Chinese women once did in their crippled feet —Milton R. Sapirstein

   Sapirstein, a psychologist, used this simile to introduce a discussion about the educational impulse and its relationship to the educational process.

   See Also: MANKIND

10. If it [learning] lights upon the mind that is dull and heavy, like a crude and undigested mass it makes it duller and heavier, and chokes it up —Michel De Montaigne
11. Learning in old age is like writing on sand; learning in youth is like engraving on stone —Solomon Ibn Gabirol
12. Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back —Chinese proverb
13. Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use —William Shenstone
14. Learning without thought is labor lost —Confucius
15. Many a scholar is like a cashier: he has the key to much money, but the money is not his —Ludwig Boerne
16. Modern education is a contradiction. It’s like a three-year-old kid with a computer in his hand who can multiply 10.6 per cent interest of $11,653, but doesn’t know if a dime is larger or smaller than a nickel —Erma Bombeck
17. The need of a teacher to believe now and again that she fosters genius is like the writer’s need to believe that he is one —Lael Tucker Wertenbaker
18. Rolling on like a great growing snowball through the vast field of medical knowledge —William James
19. A scholar is like a book written in a dead language: it is not everyone that can read in it —William Hazlitt
20. A scholar should be like a leather bottle, which admits no wind; like a deep garden bed, which retains its moisture; like a pitch-coated vessel, which preserves its wine; and like a sponge, which absorbs everything —The Talmud
21. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run —Mark Twain
22. Students are like acorns and oaks, there’s a lot more bark to the oak and a lot more nuttiness in the acorn —Anon
23. Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun —William Shakespeare
24. Take it in like blotting paper —Mavis Gallant

    See Also: ABSORBABILITY

25. The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself —Giovanni Ruffini
26. Teachers, like actors, must drug themselves to be at their best —Delmore Schwartz
27. Teaching a class was in a way like making love. Sometimes he did it with great enthusiasm … sometimes he did it because it was expected of him, and he forced himself to go through the motions —Dan Wakefield
28. Teaching a fool is like gluing together a potsherd [pottery fragment] —The Holy Bible/Apocrypha
29. Their learning is like bread in a besieged town; every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal —Samuel Johnson

    Johnson’s simile referred to his view of Scottish education.

30. To study and forget is like bearing children and burying them —The Talmud
31. To transmit wisdom to the unworthy is like throwing pearls before swine —Moses Ibn Ezra
32. Your education, like … carrots, is not a manufactured article, but just a seed which has grown up largely under nature’s friendly influence —William J. Long