"It may be said with some plausibility that there is an abecedarian ignorance that comes before knowledge, and another, doctoral ignorance that comes after knowledge: an ignorance that knowledge creates and engenders, just as it undoes and destroys the first."

—Montaigne, "Of Vain Subtleties"

Hazlitt on why the Arts are not progressive:

"The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of thought within us, and with the world of sense without us—with what we know, and see, and feel immediately. They flow from the sacred shrine of our own breasts, and kindled at the living lamp of nature. The pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood three thousand years ago, as they are at present; the face of nature and the 'the human face divine', shone as bright then as they have ever done. It is this light, reflected by the true genius on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses' feet, like that which 'circled Una's angle face,

'And made a sunshine in the shady place.'

Nature is the soul of art."

The Stranger much of various life had seen,
Been poor, been rich, and in the state between;
Had much of kindness met, and much deceit,
And all that man who deals with men must meet.
Not much he read; but from his youth had thought,
And been by care and observation taught:
'Tis thus a man his own opinion makes;
He holds that fast, which he with trouble takes;
While one whose notions all from books arise,
Upon his authors, not himself, relies -
A borrowed wisdom this, that does not make us wise.

—George Crabbe, The Family of Love

"Betting the horses is not something I advocate, but there is a great deal to be said in defense of handicapping, and I have often thought, and occasionally argued with people who considered themselves educators, that courses in handicapping should be required, like composition and Western Civilization, in our universities. For sheer complexity, there's nothing like a horse race, excepting life itself, and keeping the myriad factors in balanced consideration is fine mental training, provided the student understands that even if he does this perfectly there is no guarantee of success. The scientific handicapper will never beat the horses (Untemeyer was correct, of course), but he will learn to be alert for subtleties that escape the less trained eye. To weight and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at."

—Richard Russo, The Risk Pool

Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbearable slow machine
That brings you what you'll get.

—from The Life With a Hole in It, Philip Larkin

No soldiers in the scenery,
No thoughts of people now dead,
As they were fifty years ago,
Young and living in a live air,
Young and walking in the sunshine,
Bending in blue dresses to touch something,
Today the mind is not part of the weather.

Today the air is clear of everything.
It has no knowledge except of nothingness
And it flows over us without meanings,
As if none of us had ever been here before
And are not now: in this shallow spectacle,
This invisible activity, this sense.

—Wallace Stevens, A Clear Day and No Memories