A grave is a place where the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student
Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Topic
Fuller's aphorism — today a reader, tomorrow a leader — opens a collection more honest about the strangeness of the learning process. Twain learns about cats by carrying one by the tail. Andersen warns that not unlearning what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning. Clemenceau only started learning at thirty; Curie was taught that progress is neither swift nor easy. Blake insists the true method of knowledge is experiment. The through-line is that real learning is uncomfortable, slow, and often acquired by doing exactly the thing you were told not to do. These quotes are for people who are between things — between what they knew and what they are in the process of finding out.
A grave is a place where the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.