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| Odilon Redon The Reader – Rodolphe Bresdin 1892 lithograph British Museum |
"Nor again will I pretend that, as Bacon asserts, `the pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far surpasseth all other in nature'. This is too much the language of a salesman crying his own wares. The pleasures of the intellect are notoriously less vivid than either the pleasures of sense or the pleasures of the affections; and therefore, especially in the season of youth, the pursuit of knowledge is likely enough to be neglected and lightly esteemed in comparison with other pursuits offering much stronger immediate attractions. But the pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of pleasures; the least subject to external things, and the play of chance, and the wear of time. And as a prudent man puts money by to serve as a provision for the material wants of his old age, so too he needs to lay up against the end of his days provision for the intellect. As the years go by, comparative values are found to alter: Time, says Sophocles, takes many things which once were pleasures and brings them nearer to pain. In the day when the strong men shall bow themselves, and desire shall fail, it will be a matter of yet more concern than now, whether one can say `my mind to me a kingdom is'; and whether the windows of the soul look out upon a broad and delightful landscape, or face nothing but a brick wall."
– A.E Housman, Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Latin, University College, London, 1892
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| Anonymous painter Unknown woman reading ca. 1850 watercolor National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Gaetano Gandolfi Young girl reading 18th century drawing British Museum |
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| Egdon van der Neer The Reader 17th century oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| John Michael Wright Sir Roger L'Estrange ca. 1680 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Anonymous photographer Georgina Elizabeth Moncreiffe Ward, Countess of Dudley ca. 1891-95 albumen print National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Frederick Henry Evans Harley Granville-Barker 1890s platinum print National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| after Sir Joshua Reynolds Giuseppe Baretti 1773 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Anonymous painter Unknown man reading early 19th century watercolor National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| John Downman Richmal Mangnall 1814 watercolor National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Joseph Severn John Keats ca. 1821-23 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Pieter Christoffel Wonder Study for Patrons and Lovers of Art ca. 1826 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Louisa Anne Beresford Mrs Walter Alexander and Captain Ogle with a book 1888 watercolor National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Daniel Maclise Winthrop Mackworth Praed ca. 1830-35 drawing National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Daniel Maclise John Gibson Lockhart 1830 drawing National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Adolph de Meyer Margot Asquith ca. 1911 bromide print National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| George Stuckey William Barnes ca. 1870 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery |
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| Duncan Grant Desmond MacCarthy 1944 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Dora Carrington Lytton Strachey with a book 1916 oil National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Anonymous Sir John Bowring 1854 drawing National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Simon Bussy Sir Richard Strachey 1901 pastel National Portrait Gallery (U.K.) |