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Pedants Quotes

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Pedants Quotes

“Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture.”

Culture Process Forget Diligent Pedants Pedantry

Author:Albert J. Nock

“Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too.”

Thinking Should Kind May Common Errors Remembered Pedants Pedantry Useful Knowledge

Author:Albert J. Nock

“It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.”

Turns Fate Achievement Originality Orthodoxy Drains Stirring Great Achievement Imitator Pedants

Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

“Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.”

Silence Pride Silent Tricks Scholar Physicians Silence Is Pedants

Author:Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

“The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians - and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse.”

Logic Experts Nonsense Priests Diligent Pedants

Author:H. L. Mencken

“He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.”

Writing Advice Pedants

Author:Jean de la Bruyere

“The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”

Wells Form Language Cost Labor Foundation Gentleman Scholar Indispensable Pedants

Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

“The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves.”

Giving Art Fit Direct Performances Slave Access Artistic Tolerate Greece Ornaments Snob Pedants

Book:Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New

Source: Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New

“Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.”

World Way Reality Bits Vision Worry Struggle Serious Demand Intellectual Understood Tiny Bites Scholar Flawed Patches Birthright Mayhem Pedants

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“He who studies without passion will never become anything more than a pedant.”

Passion Learning Study Pedants

Book:Stories and Legends

Source: Stories and Legends

“Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.”

Ifs Two Might Age Produce Genius Censure Imitating Pedants

Book:Works

Source: Works

“To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.”

Ifs Writing Faults Ridiculous Authorship Pedants

Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)

“Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.”

Ignorance Folly Disgusting Pedants Pedantry

Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think

“Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.”

Men Giving Matter Opportunity Thousand Ten Method Improvement Silly Variety Absurdity Good Sense Insufferable Pedants Pedantry Impertinence Silly Man

Book:Addison's Essays

Source: Addison's Essays

“Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it.”

Form Hypocrisy Inns Pedants Pedantry

Author:Joseph Addison

“An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.”

May Artist Museums Pedants

Book:The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four

Source: The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four

“He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants.”

Air Students College Smell Pursue Smoke Kitchen Dry Cant Herds Sects Inhumanity Pedants

Author:Johann Kaspar Lavater

“Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.”

Proud Vanity Be Proud Pedants Pedantry

Author:Wilkie Collins

“In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.”

Mind Would Be Chance Theory Truth Is Evidence Atheist Appearance Rational Agnostic Hypocrite Theism Pedants Pending

Book:The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

“The brains of a pedant however full, are vacant.”

Brain Vacant Pedants Pedantry

Author:Sir Fulke Greville

“We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.”

Source: Form and actuality

“My father was a pedant and a bully who cared about nobody, and I was not to see him until I was eighteen.”

Father Bully Eighteen Pedants

Author:George Weinberg

“A frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort.”

Stupid Dialect Pedants

Book:History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great

Source: History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great

“Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are.”

Ifs Pain Together Three Found Results Quality Taste Judgment Criticism Critics Depth Good Sense Pedants Pedantry Taste And Judgment

Author:Horace Walpole

“Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.”

Art Artist Individual Judging Appreciate Criticism Genre Open Minded Connoisseur Pedants Individual Work

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!”

Freedom Pedants Pedantry

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“The nudes of art are not so distant from pornography as prudish pedants pretend.”

Art Pornography Nudity Pedants

Author:Mason Cooley

“There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?”

Men Should Children Suffering Passion Father Judging Judgment Accounts Anger Patient Revenge Criminals Physicians Bats Animated Whips Transport Corrections Chastisement Pedants

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.”

Knows Ignorant Pedants Pedantry

Author:Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

“In England, wit is at least a profession, if not an art. everything becomes professional there, and even the rogues of that islandare pedants. So are the "wits" there too. They introduce into reality absolute freedom whose reflection lends a romantic and piquant air to wit, and thus they live wittily; hence their talent for madness. They die for their principles.”

Ifs Art Reality Dies Principles Air Talent Reflection Madness England Absolutes Profession Wit Introducing Rogues Absolute Freedom Pedants

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“Burn pedants in pale fire. Accept no fashions. Be your own fashion. Do not rely on earlier triumphs. Be new at each appearance.”

Life Accepting Fire Fashion Appearance Triumph Rely Pale Pedants

Author:Vladimir Nabokov

“History and war are cruel pedants. Those who know too little of the former are likely to have too much of the latter.”

Knows Littles War Too Much Former Latter Pedants

Author:Oliver North

“The search for truth in cyberspace will take you through the wormhole, and there's nothing on the other side but pedants and nitpickers and bottomless ambiguity. If you're not careful, you'll spend all your time proving everything and understanding nothing.”

Ifs Understanding Sides Prove Careful Ambiguity Search For Truth Cyberspace Pedants Wormholes

Author:Mike Rowe

“The main thing is, and of course this is a pedant talking, we should start our education on these issues in kindergarten. Instead of saying, "See Spot run," we ought to say, "See the plant grow in the sun." We ought to explain what runs the weather in the third or fourth grade to start out with.”

Should Running Courses Grows Talking Sun Issues Ought Thirds Plant Weather Spots Grades Fourth Kindergarten Pedants Fourth Grade

Author:Paul R. Ehrlich

“Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.”

Two Common Common Sense Experts Bullying Bullied Specialists Pedants

Book:Over the Teacups

Source: Over the Teacups

“Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.”

Waste Arguing Annoying Nomenclature Pedants

Book:Memory (Hardcover)

Source: Memory (Hardcover)

“The notion that anything is gained by fixing a language in a groove is cherished only by pedants.”

Language Notion Fixing Groove Pedants

Book:American Language

Source: American Language

“My fellow critics and I may occasionally fault a movie for departing, in detail or in spirit, from its literary source, but the grousing of a few adult pedants is nothing compared to the wrath of several million bookish 10-year-olds. Their presumed demands, and the hovering spirit of Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, inhibit this movie as it did the first Potter film.”

Years Firsts May Film Spirit Millions Source Demand Adults Fellows Faults Critics Details Creator Wrath Potters Hovering Pedants Departing

Author:A. O. Scott

“I became a pedant of the form. I did my graduate work in art history and particularly in the history of French satirical cartooning. And that made me aware of what a rich and resilient tradition this seemingly scabrous sacrilegious magazine still represented in French life.”

Art Made Stills Form Rich Tradition Magazines Graduates Resilient Satirical Art History Pedants Sacrilegious

Author:Scott Simon

“Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.”

Poet Joyce Pedants

Book:A Collection of Essays

Source: A Collection of Essays

“Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual.”

Has Beens Language Century Style Tradition Logic Bases Thoughtful Manuals Great Writers Usage Pedants Oral Tradition

Author:Steven Pinker

“A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.”

Art Philosophy School Funny Brain Education Fool Intellectual University Foolish Folly Superstitions Pedants Pedantry Philosophy Of Education Education For All Man And Superman University Education

Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more

“This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

Type Pedants Pedantry Prepositions

Author:Winston Churchill

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

Believe Body Remember Spirit Desire Fall I Believe Bits Ready Aspect Meetings Falling In Love Historian Atoms One Direction Reminiscing Parts Of The Body Pedants

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain (except the mind of a pedant), perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being”

Mind Certain Quality Perfection Mere Endure Mysterious Precise Pedants

Book:A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia

“Fools act on imagination without knowledge. Pedants act on knowledge without imagination.”

Imagination Knowledge Fool Foolishness Pedants

Author:William Arthur Ward

“Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.”

Rooms Brain Education Teaching Pedants Pedantry Lumber Showy

Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man.”

Ifs Men Philosophy Philosopher Caricatures Pedants

Book:Tragic Sense of Life

Source: Tragic Sense of Life

“The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic.”

Philosophy Philosopher Scholar Breeding Cynic Pedants Good Breeding

Book:Lord Chesterfield's Letters

Source: Lord Chesterfield's Letters

“A fool is only troublesome, a pedant insupportable.”

Fool Stupidity Troublesome Pedants

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte