Ignorance Increases with Reading

Bernard Berenson, One Year's Reading For Fun (1942) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), p. 59 [5 May 1942]:

As I have occasion to consult a volume of Deutsche Biographie, I look at all items of interest. They consist of entries for people known to me not only as names but even as careers and values they are people, however, about whom I have never read a biographical account. How much one would like to know more about what one cannot give time to. One's ignorance increases as one reads. One finds persons, places, events referred to, whether hitherto unmentioned or too vaguely to satisfy, and one hungers for more till either accident or imperative need drives one to procure information.

The Waking World

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Opus epistolarum, 12 vols, ed. by P.S. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906-1958), III (1913), p. 585 [‘To Henry Guildford’, 15 May 1519]:

Mundus resipiscit velut ex altissimo somno expergiscens; et tamen pertinacibus animis adhuc repugnant quidam, veterem inscitiam suam manibus pedibusque ac mordicus etiam retinentes.

The world recovers as if waking from the deepest slumber; and yet some still fight back with obstinate pride, fighting to preserve their old ignorance with fists and feet and their teeth as well.

My translation.

October Sunrise at the Xiang River