Intellect Quotes

“They have a plentiful lack of wit.”

“A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.”

“Yet writers say, as in the sweetest budThe eating canter dwells, so eating loveInhabits in the finest wits of all.”

“I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.”

“Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”

“He was not so much brain as earwax”

“Literature is a comprehensive essence of the intellectual life of a nation.”

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicatedTo closeness and the bettering of my mind.”

“The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.”

“Between cultivated minds the first interview is the best.”

“Knowledge is the only elegance.”

“There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.”

“Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.”

“The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.”

“The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.”

“The proof of a high education is the ability to speak about complex matters as simply as possible.”

“Women stand related to beautiful nature around us, and the enamoured youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe their intellectual influence on the most serious student. They refine and clear his mind: teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and difficult.”

“It is only when mind and character slumber that the dress can be seen. If the intellect were always awake, and every noble sentiment, the man might go in huckaback or mats, and his dress would be admired and imitated.”

“We expect a great man to be a good reader.”

“Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and mine.”

“Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.”

“Character repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before newflashes of moral worth.”

“The essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old.”

“The finest wits have their sediment.”