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date: 24 June 2025

Roger Ascham 1515–68
English scholar, writer, and courtier 

  1. There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
    The Schoolmaster (1570) bk. 1
  2. He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgement of wise men allow him.
    Toxophilus (1545) ‘To all gentlemen and yeomen of England’; summarizing a passage in Aristotle Topics bk. 2, ch. 2; see Yeats