Erudition quotes:

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Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit. -- Georg C. Lichtenberg
Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull. -- Ambrose Bierce
Let's face it: professing a deep interest in movies, the absolutely dominant global art form of the last century, is at this point like professing an interest in air. Passion is nice. Erudition is admirable. But it's like that moment when good manners cross over into meaningless etiquette. -- David Rakoff
Erudition without pedantry is as a rare as wisdom itself. -- George Sarton
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public. -- Agnes Repplier
If you see your nature, you don't need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless but also cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines? -- Bodhidharma
A poet's cultural baggage and erudition can interfere with a poem. -- Douglas Dunn
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media. -- William Safire
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science. -- James Madison
However, I had a chance encounter with an admissions officer of Stevens Institute of Technology, who so impressed me by his erudition and enthusiasm for the school that I changed course and entered Stevens Institute. -- Frederick Reines
I have to hold a meeting with the rising generation every evening, and that takes time. Henry can say, 'Twinkle, twinkle,' all himself, and Edward can repeat it after his father! Giants of genius! Paragons of erudition! -- Adoniram Judson
If I wanted to be Rimbaud, what was I doing in graduate school? Trying to stay out of the army, of course. Graduate study gave me a draft deferment. But I also knew I lacked erudition and polish and was often sunk in forlorn reveries. -- Richard Elman
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule. -- Joanne Harris
I would hardly say that I have a rich knowledge of anything in particular, but I do seem to be burdened with an unseemly appetite for intellectual and artistic erudition, which, for the sake of balance, I keep well harnessed to a reliable sense of the absurd. -- Thomas Steinbeck
In many ways, 'What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World' is just one big thank-you note to my teachers. The book is dedicated to my fifth and sixth grade English teacher, Dr. Joseph D'Angelo, a massive force of erudition, martial artistry, culture, and love. -- Taylor Mali
You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition." Spoken by Abigail Adams -- David McCullough
Ignorance may find a truth on its doorstep that erudition vainly seeks in the stars. -- George Iles
The first principle of solid wisdom is discretion, without it all the erudition of life is merely bagatelle. -- Norm MacDonald
The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition. -- Roger Scruton
Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always. -- Walter Savage Landor
The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr's The Windward Road. -- Peter Matthiessen
To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. [Fr., Celui qui a de l'imagination sans erudition a des ailes, et n'a pas de pieds.] -- Joseph Joubert
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought. -- Andre Maurois
A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may become more acute, but not remain as pure. -- Marcel Proust
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds. -- Chinua Achebe
These poems possess intelligence, erudition, gravitas and urgency. Serious and moving in voice and ambition, this passionately lyrical and articulate work reminds me very much of the capacious, fierce and intelligent work of Adrienne Rich. -- Tony Hoagland

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