The mind of the scholar, if you would have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his armor should be somewhat bruised by rude encounters even, than hang for ever rusting on the wall.

The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition: never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning.

A scholar knows no boredom.

Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood. Do you think a Greek name gives more weight to your reasons?

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.

This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.

The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose.

A scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that, when you ask him his opinion of any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

A great man will find a great subject, or which is the same thing, make any subject great.

When nature exceeds culture, we have the rustic. When culture exceeds nature, we have the pedant.

We want a Society for the Suppression of Erudite Research and the Decent Burial of the Past. The ghosts of the dead past want quite as much laying as raising.

Things take indeed a wondrous turn When learned men do stoop to learn.

University convention submerges nature. It issues licenses, and hunting without one is forbidden.

Never did I think that the university was properly ministerial to the society around it. Rather I thought and think that society is ministerial to the university, and I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can in turn be a blessing to society.

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

To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar.

Learning is the property of those who fear to do disagreeable things.