Education Quote by John Denham

A warning disguised as good manners, Denham's couplet draws a bright line around curiosity and then dares you to test it. "Search not" and "Nor try" come down like parliamentary taps of the gavel: the rhythm is prohibitive, but the elegance makes obedience feel like sophistication. Denham, a politician writing in a century when theology, monarchy, and civil order were entangled, isn't merely offering personal advice. He's rehearsing a political ethic: stability depends on agreed limits to inquiry.

The phrasing matters. "Things too deeply hid" suggests the universe has compartments on purpose, secrets that are not just undiscovered but meant to stay buried. Then "knowledge is forbid" shifts from natural mystery to explicit authority. That verb is doing the real work. Someone, somewhere, has the right to forbid knowing. It's a compact defense of hierarchy: not everyone gets access; not every question is legitimate; some truths are socially incendiary.

Subtextually, it's also a self-protective move for an era of volatile allegiances and dangerous speech. Under regimes that could punish dissent as heresy or sedition, advising restraint could be prudence, even survival. Yet the moral framing launders fear into virtue. The couplet doesn't argue that forbidden knowledge is false or harmful; it argues that the act of seeking is itself suspect.

That's why it lands: it captures the perennial bargain offered by power - trade curiosity for safety, trade complexity for order - in language smooth enough to feel like wisdom rather than enforcement.