To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), an Anglican bishop and devotional writer often called the “Shakespeare of Divines,” wrote in a period marked by religious controversy and civil war in England. Much of his work urges moral self-scrutiny and humility, especially in matters of piety and intellectual attainment. The sentiment behind this quotation fits Taylor’s recurring theme that knowledge and eloquence are spiritually dangerous when they feed vanity rather than virtue. In Taylor’s milieu, “learning” carried social prestige and could be wielded polemically; his devotional prose repeatedly warns that pride corrupts even good gifts, and that true wisdom is shown in modesty and charity rather than self-display.

The aphorism turns a common assumption upside down: learning is not itself the mark of wisdom if it produces arrogance. Taylor suggests that boasting of one’s knowledge reveals a deeper ignorance—ignorance of one’s limitations, of the moral purpose of learning, and of the virtues (humility, patience, charity) that should accompany understanding. The line also implies that intellectual pride blinds: it makes a person less teachable and more concerned with status than truth. In a devotional frame, it warns that even admirable achievements become vices when they inflate the ego, and that genuine learning is quiet, self-correcting, and oriented toward better living.