"I knew I was going to like Prof. the Rev. Darcourt. He seemed to think that learning could be amusing, and that heavy people needed stirring up. Like Rabelais, of whom even educated people like Parlabane had such a stupid opinion. Rabelais was gloriously learned because learning amused him, and so far as I am concerned that is learning's best justification. Not the only one, but the best. It is not that I wanted to know a great deal, in order to acquire what is now called expertise, and which enables one to become an expert-tease to people who don't know as much as you do about the tiny corner you have made your own...In a modern university if you ask for knowledge they will provide it in almost any form — though if you ask for out-of-fashion things they may say, like the people in shops, "Sorry, there's no call for it.""
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Second Paradise II, section 3.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cornish_Trilogy
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Cornish Trilogy
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