Education is the food of youth, the delight of old age, the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity, and the provocation to grace in the soul.
Does anyone know in which of his writings, the above quote attributed to St. Augustine may be found?
If not, does anyone know the type of education to which the above quote refers?
I ask because for a thousand or so years after St. Augustine, the Imitation of Christ, for example, admonishes us about devoting too much time acquiring secular knowledge at the expense of the spiritual with warnings such as these quotes from Book 1 Chapter 3 (The Doctrine of Truth) (translation by Rev. Richard Challoner, 1893):
What availeth a great dispute about abstruse and obscure matters, for not knowing which we shall not be questioned at the Day of Judgment?
and
Tell me where are now all those great doctors, with whom thou wast well acquainted, whilst they were living and flourished in learning? Now others fill their places, and I know not whether they ever think of them. In their lifetime they seemed to be something, and now they are not spoken of.
