#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.”

“Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.”

“Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other.”

“Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.”

“Culture implies all which gives the mind possession of its own powers, as languages to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. Culture alters the political status of an individual. It raises a rival royalty in a monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is ever a romance of history in all dynasties--the co-presence of the revolutionary force in intellect. It creates a personal independence which the monarch cannot look down, and to which he must often succumb.”

“There is an intimate interdependence of intellect and morals.”

“Much of the wisdom of the world is not wisdom, and the most illuminated class of men are no doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers.”

“I'd rather argue against a hundred idiots, than have one agree with me.”

“I am very glad there are quite a number of people born with a gift and a liking for all of this; like great chessplayers who play sixteen games at once blindfold and die quite soon of epilepsy. Serve them right! I hope the Mathematicians, however, are well rewarded. I promise never to blackleg their profession nor take the bread out of their mouths.”

“The intellect,-that is miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars shine through, with attractive beams.”

“I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.”

“Intellect in its effort to explain Love got stuck in the mud like an ass. Love alone could explain love and loving.”

“There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding.”

“He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts. (Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost, IV)”

“Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question.”

“True wit never made us laugh.”

“Nature is good, but intellect is better, as the law-giver is before the law-receiver.”

“By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary.”

“The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.”

“Music causes us to think eloquently.”

“People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.”

“Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.”

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

“The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?”

“Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but backrout quite the wits.”

“How much more the seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, and almost a going out of thebody to think!”