John Lubbock Quotes

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.

The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Don't be afraid of showing affection. Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate. Men are more helped by sympathy than by service. Love is more than money, and a kind word will give more pleasure than a present.

Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.

We profit little by books we do not enjoy.

To lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is wanting.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

I cannot, however, but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness of Duty; for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking. —SIR JOHN LUBBOCK

What we see depends mainly on what we look for

To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being."- Biologist John Lubbock.

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. —SIR JOHN LUBBOCK THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE AND THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE IN, 1892

The first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. In a reply to a letter from John Lubbock, thanking Darwin for an advance copy of his book, Darwin made a remarkable comment about William Paley's book Natural Theology, which had been published half a century before. Darwin wrote: "I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's 'Natural Theology'. I could almost formerly have said it by heart." Years later in his Autobiography Darwin wrote of Paley that "The careful study of [his] works . . . was the only part of the academical course [in Cambridge] which . . . was of the least use to me in the education of my mind." Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind

The number of mental tendencies involved in the creation and nourishment of religious falsehoods shouldn’t surprise us. After all, the mind was built by a process that is, strictly speaking, indifferent to truth. Natural selection favors traits that are good at getting their bearer’s genes into the next generation, period. If saying something false, or believing something false, often furthered that goal during human evolution, then the human mind will naturally encourage some kinds of falsity. This systematic muddle isn’t an exclusive property of the “primitive” mind, as John Lubbock (chapter 1) suggested; all of the above delusory tendencies have been documented in people living in modern societies—many of them students at fine universities!

War and Peace has to be put in a group not with Madame Bovary, Vanity Fair, or The Mill on the Floss, but with the Iliad, in the sense that when the novel is finished nothing is finished—the stream of life flows on, and with the appearance of Prince Andrew’s son the novel ends on the beginning of a new life. All the time there are openings out of the story into the world beyond. This is a thing that had never been attempted by historical novelists before Tolstóy. As for the open form, it has often been attempted, but never so successfully. In a very different way the open form was achieved by James Joyce in Ulysses. As Tolstóy is compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, so critics say that Joyce’s novel is of a mythological nature. John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga and Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale may also claim to belong to the category of “open” novels. No novel has received more enthusiastic praise both in Russia and England than War and Peace. John Galsworthy spoke of it as “the greatest novel ever written,” and those fine critics Percy Lubbock and E. M. Forster have been no less emphatic. In The Craft of Fiction Lubbock says that War and Peace is: “a picture of life that has never been surpassed for its grandeur and its beauty. . . . The business of the novelist is to create life, and here is life created indeed! In the whole of fiction no scene is so continually washed by the common air, free to us all, as the scene of Tolstóy, the supreme genius among novelists. “Pierre and Andrew and Natásha and the rest of them are the children of yesterday and today and tomorrow; there is nothing in any of them that is not of all time. To an English reader of today it is curious—and more, it is strangely moving—to note how faithfully the creations of Tolstóy, the nineteenth-century Russian, copy the young people of the twentieth century and of England: it is all one, life in Moscow then, life in London now, provided only that it is young enough.” E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel says: “No English novelist is as great

Emily liked the classical music Jim listened to; he told her all about the history of the Rock of Music when she was a little girl. As she remembered it, it was discovered by a teenager from Lubbock, Texas named Buddy and he ruled the Rock until his airplane was shot down by his evil rival, King Elvis. King Elvis was then ousted by several tribes from England and California who unified and fought against him under their leaders, John-Paul George and Jimi Clapton. One

Jangan biarkan masa mudamu berlalu tanpa mimpi, dan jangan biarkan harimu berlalu tanpa harapan.

How little we see! What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. Sir John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for … In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the coloring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them. John Lubbock

We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the world.