The goal of learning

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him.

John Milton, “Of Education,” Complete Prose Works, 2:366-67, quoted in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints, p. 163.  For an in-print volume of Milton, see Complete Poems and Major Prose, pp. 630-39.