Ornamental knowledge

"Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge."
"Certainly."
"You say that a man's first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?"
"Of course."
"Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position."

 (Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost. Source.)

Passages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks

The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

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Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.

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Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

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As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.

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Just as food eaten without caring for it is turned into loathsome nourishment, so study without a taste for it spoils memory, by retaining nothing which it has taken in.

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Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?