Scholarship

"Scholarship, far from leading inexorably to a profession, may in fact preclude it. For it does not permit you to abandon it."

"ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

"Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship."

"And let a Scholler, all earths volumes carrie, He will be but a walking dictionarie."

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."

"We must distinguish between a man of polite learning and a meer schollar: the first is a gentleman and what a gentleman should be; the last is a meer bookcase, a bundle of letters, a head stufft with the jargon of languages, a man that understands every body but is understood by no body."

"A great scholar…is…not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life."

"Hell is paved with the skulls of great scholars, and paled in with the bones of great men."

"Just as two knives are both sharpened by being rubbed one against the other, so scholars improve and increase in knowledge when in touch with one another."

"Scilicet ut vellem curvo dinoscere rectum atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum."

"Exquisita lectio singulorum, doctissimum; cauta electio meliorum, optimum facit."

"There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail, Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail."

"For if hevene be on this erthe, and ese to any soule, It is in cloistre or in scole."

"Bourgeois scholars and publicists usually come out in defence of imperialism in a somewhat veiled form; they obscure its complete, domination and its deep-going roots, strive to push specific and secondary details into the forefront and do their very best to distract attention from essentials by means of absolutely ridiculous schemes for “reform”, such as police supervision of the trusts or banks, etc. Cynical and frank imperialists who are bold enough to admit the absurdity of the idea of reforming the fundamental characteristics of imperialism are a rarer phenomenon."

"You would think him a very foolish Fellow, that should not value a Vertuous, or a Wise Man, infinitely before a great Scholar."

"Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one’s peers."

"True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgement."

"Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears."

"The ink of scholars (used in writing) is weighed on the Day of Judgement with the blood of martyrs and the ink of scholars outweighs the blood of martyrs."

"One should observe our scholars closely: they have reached the point where they think only “reactively,” i.e. they must read before they can think."

"Let us explain Homer in no terms but his own, and our understanding of the work will be the fresher for it. Once the words are grasped with greater precision in their meaning and relevance, they will suddenly recover all their ancient splendour. The scholar too, like the restorer of an old painting, may yet in many places remove the dark coating of dust and varnish which the centuries have drawn over the picture, and thus give back to the colours their original brilliance."

"[A] society that consisted of nothing but scholars would soon starve to death, and it wouldn’t be very interesting while it lasted."