Whatever study tends neither ...

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Quotes from the same author

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Our liberty cannot be taken away unless the people are themselves accomplices.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
The fire of my adversity has purged the mass of my acquaintance.
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 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke