Scholar Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps he even needs to have been a critic and a sceptic and a dogmatist and an historian, and in addition a poet and collector and traveller and puzzle-solver and moralist and seer and 'free spirit' and nearly all things, so that he can traverse the range of human values and value-feelings and be able to look with many kinds of eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths into every height, from the corners into every wide expanse. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Allah, Most High, has truly blessed us. He has created just for us the mysterious spirit that He has breathed into us and by so doing distinguished us from all other physical creation. He has adorned us with our incomparable intellect, which further distinguishes us from all else in this creation. What other creature on this planet -another gift He has blessed us with- can even begin to create the likes of this Internet? Will we not stop, give thanks to our Merciful and Generous Lord? Will we not stop and realize how precious our lives are and begin to show each other more love, mercy, kindness and empathy? Will we not stop, take time, and reflect? — Imam Zaid Shakir

However great an intellectual may be, however great one may be as a scholar or a man of learning, one has also to acquire humanness. Without humanness, scholarship and intellectual eminence are of no value. — Sathya Sai Baba

Maude meant nothing that she said. She knew how pretty she looked in furs. She was a rattle, not understanding her own bnoise; but the scholar hung upon her words, and believed them inspired, and did not know they were murmurings from a shell. — Ernest G. Henham

Iron sharpens iron; scholar, the scholar. — William Drummond

There's more than one thing I can't do and there are a lot more things than that that you can't do or you wouldn't be in the newspaper business. You'd be a jockey and a scholar and a connoisseur of femininity like I am — Laura Hillenbrand

He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God ... and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr; — Will Durant

A preacher should have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. His problem is how to toughen his hide without hardening his heart. — Vance Havner

Novelists would do well to remember that when the works of the scholar-historians create doubt in the researcher's mind, the researcher then turns to literature as a primary source for confirmation or correction. If the truth of a time, a people, a state is not available anywhere else, let it be in the novel. - from Twayne's US Authors Series: JOHN A WILLIAMS by Gilbert Muller — John A. Williams

Every man of sound brain whom you meet knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea? — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The scholar is early acquainted with every department of the impossible. — John Ruskin

Golden sees parental uninterest in collective solutions as part of a larger "decline in the social contract" ... "As a scholar, I'm very disturbed that we have more [media] articles about toxins in the home than the fact that we don't have universal prenatal care, she says. "We've moved from collective concern about infant and child welfare into this very privatized focus on "my child" and this intensive child-rearing. — Emily Matchar

This is fan fiction, but it's the fan fiction of a classical scholar who knows his stuff, even if he is a touch irreverent and unorthodox. — Sarah Warning Potentially Off-Topic

An ally in time of need is worth more than gold.
(Lady Rose quoting Scholar Tan) — Michael Pryor

Maybe if you had focused a little more in school, you could have gotten some scholar..." "No!" Owen shouts, plugging his ears. "How dare you speak that word in my presence?" "What word?" Liam asks with a chuckle. He raises his voice purposefully. "Scholarships? — Loretta Lost

But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what wemight call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of his authorship alone. — George Pattison

Give me a scholar, therefore, who is able to think and to write, to look with an eye of discernment into things, and to do business himself, if called upon, who hath both civil and military knowledge; one, moreover, who has been in camps, and has seen armies in the field and out of it; knows the use of arms, and machines, and warlike engines of every kind; can tell what the front, and what the horn is, how the ranks are to be disposed, how the horse is to be directed, and from whence to advance or to retreat; one, in short, who does not stay at home and trust to the reports of others: but, above all, let him be of a noble and liberal mind; let him neither fear nor hope for anything; otherwise he will only resemble those unjust judges who determine from partiality or prejudice, and give sentence for hire: but, whatever the man is, as such let him be described. — Lucian Of Samosata

THE SENTIMENTALIZATION OF CHILDHOOD has produced a great many paradoxes. The most curious, however, may be that children have acquired more and more stuff the more useless they have become. Until the late nineteenth century, when kids were still making vital contributions to the family economy, they didn't have toys as we know them. They played with found and household objects (sticks, pots, brooms). In his book Children at Play, the scholar Howard Chudacoff writes, Some historians even maintain that before the modern era, the most common form of children's play occurred not with toys but with other children - siblings, cousins, and peers. — Jennifer Senior

Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values - between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered, "I haven't decided yet." After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered: "They haven't told me yet. — Ronald Reagan

In your temporary failure there is no evidence that you may not yet be a better scholar, and a more successful man in the great struggle of life, than many others, who have entered college more easily. — Abraham Lincoln

Madness to us means reversion; to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form ... — Djuna Barnes

Harvard introduced the now famous ad hoc system whereby a group of experts in the field of the faculty member to be promoted are consulted concerning the stature of that scholar. This move made the opinion within the field, rather than the clubby relationship within the department, the determining factor in the promotion of professors. — Henry Rosovsky

As a Persian scholar wrote, around 1115, "The people of China are the most skilfull of men in handicrafts. No other nation approaches them in this. The people of Rum (the Eastern Roman Empire) are highly proficient (in technology) too, but they do not reach the standards of the Chinese. The latter say that all men are blind in craftsmanship, except the men of Rum, who however are one-eyed, that is, they know only half the business. — Tonio Andrade

I'm an amalgamation of what I've needed to be. Part scholar, part rebel, part nobleman, part Mistborn, and part soldier. Sometimes I don't even know myself. I had a devil of a time getting all those pieces to work together. And, just when I'm starting to get it figured out, the world up and ends on me. — Brandon Sanderson

To spend too much time in them [studying] is sloth, to use them too much for ornament is affectation, to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor* of a scholar ... . — Francis Bacon

He hadn't changed since I had seen him a few years earlier. With his close-cropped black beard, angular features, and riveting gaze, Craig still looks the role of a serious scholar. He speaks in cogent sentences, never losing his train of thought, always working through an answer methodically, point by point, fact by fact. — Lee Strobel

Alas he had forgotten, he said, that she was a novelist as well as a mathematician. What a disappointment for the Parisian that he was neither. Merely a scholar, and a man. — Alice Munro

In the dining room, my brother - the scholar - was asking my father what it meant, amadan. My father said, "A fool. It means someone's a fool." Even with the water running, the cup of soapy water at my lips, I could hear my father's shout of laughter when my brother asked him, "Who is? — Alice McDermott

Good night, Aphrodite," he said softly, liking the feel of the word on his lips, like some sort of incantation. Her green eyes widened behind her spectacles at hearing him speak her actual name. But she didn't correct him. And if he wasn't mistaken, there was a blush rising in her cheek. Perhaps there was more of the pretty scholar's namesake in her than she'd previously let on. — Manda Collins

Bellgrove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a man, a scholar, a leader or even as a companion, was neverless utterly alone. For the weak, above all, have their friends. Yet his gentleness, his pretence at authority, his palpable humanity were unable, for some reason or other, to function. He was demonstrably the type of venerable and absent-minded professor about whom all the sharp-beaked boys of the world should swarm. — Mervyn Peake

At George Mason University I saw Hoppe present a lecture in which he claimed that Ludwig von Mises had set the intellectual foundation for not only economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics, as well. This bizarre claim turned a serious scholar and profound thinker into a comical cult figure, a sort of Euro Kim Il Sung. — Tom G. Palmer

There is nothing," says a correspondent of the New York Times, "which the business world discards as unpractical and useless so much as the quiet, thinking scholar. But this is the man who makes revolutions. Politicians are mere puppets in the hands of men of thought. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i.e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high ... The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is due to the fact that he has no reverence for himself. — Leo Strauss

Of all the many memoirs by former Soviet officials, Palazchenko's is among the best written and also the most objective. Even his descriptions of U.S. policy are more accurate and judicious than those of some American scholars. — Jack F. Matlock Jr.

In the controversy that followed the prince's remarks, his most staunch defender was professor John Taylor, a scholar whose work I had last noticed when he gave good reviews to the psychokinetic (or whatever) capacities of the Israeli conjuror and fraud Uri Geller. The heir to the throne seems to possess the ability to surround himself - perhaps by some mysterious ultramagnetic force? - with every moon-faced spoon-bender, shrub-flatterer, and water-diviner within range. — Christopher Hitchens

The difference between the one who remembers Allah and the one who doesn't is like the living and the dead. — Habib Kadhim Al-Saqqaf

Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I was lucky enough to be fairly quick at understanding what was taught, but unlucky enough not to be really interested in it, so I always got my exams but never had the scholar's love of learning for its own sake. — Maeve Binchy

And then a scholar said, "Speak of talking." And he answered, saying: "And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. — Kahlil Gibran

The scholar gains every day; the man of Tao loses every day. — Laozi

I was no scholar in college, and was arrogant about what I thought. — Cynthia Voigt

There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable. — Harold Bloom

He's a great mysterious Bodhisattva I think maybe a reincarnation of Asagna the great Mahayana scholar of the old centuries." "And who am I?" "I dunno, maybe you're Goat. — Jack Kerouac

Yeah. No matter what Coach does or doesn't do. Because ... I'm going on my terms. Even if by some miracle he recommends me for the scholarship, I'm not taking it."
That surprises her. "I don't get it."
"That's why I had no choice but to let that pitch go by. I had to prove to myself that I could live without baseball. I can't go to college on their terms. I can't be the ballplayer first and the student second, and if they're giving me an athletic scholarship, believe me - that's what it would be. Athlete-scholar, not the other way around. No one can convince me otherwise.
"So, yeah. I'll have to take out student loans. I'll have to work my ass off. But that's OK. — Barry Lyga

Do not be an arrogant scholar, for scholarship cannot subsist with arrogance. — Umar

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Just as the education of nerve and sinew is vital to the excellent athlete and education of the mind is vital to the scholar, education of the conscience is vital to the truly proactive, highly effective person. Training and educating the conscience, however, requires even greater concentration, more balanced discipline, more consistently honest living. It requires regular feasting on inspiring literature, thinking noble thoughts and, above all, living in harmony with its still small voice. — Stephen Covey

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds. — Felix Adler

A scholar must not only be capable of hard, often totally resultless work - he must actually relish it. — Richard D. Altick

Sometimes a photographer is a passenger, sometimes a person who stays in one place. What he watches changes constantly, but his watching never changes. He doesn't examine like a doctor, defend like a lawyer, analyze like a scholar, support like a priest, make people laugh like a comedian, or intoxicate like a singer. He only watches. This is enough. No, this is all I can do. All a photographer can do is watch. Therefore, a photographer has to watch all the time. He must face the object and make his entire body an eye. A photographer is someone who wagers everything on seeing. — Shomei Tomatsu

With these meager scraps of Latin and the like, you may perhaps be taken for a scholar, which is honorable and profitable these days. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

No scientist, engineer, writer, psychologist, artist, or physician - and certainly no scholar, and therefore no serious university faculty member - pursues his or her vocation by getting right answers from a set of prescribed alternatives that trivialize complexity and ambiguity. — Leon Botstein

I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment. — Susanna Clarke

The bottom line about the information possessed by non-Western peoples is that the information becomes valid only when offered by a white scholar recognized by the academic establishment; in effect, the color of the skin guarantees scientific objectivity. — Vine Deloria Jr.

The actions of a leader are always criticised by scholars as well as common men. A scholar has no obligation to produce result, so he is free to rebuke leaders for not sticking to noble means. Common men envy leaders their position and power, thus feeling happy in vilifying them to pull them down to their own levels. — Awdhesh Singh

Based on the experience of history and civilization of mankind, which is more important for Muslims today, to no longer busy discussing the greatness that Muslims achieved in the past, or debating who first discovered the number zero, including the number one, two, three and so on, as the contribution of Muslims in the writing of numbers in this modern era and the foundation and development of civilizations throughout the world. But how Muslims will regained the lead and control of science and technology, leading back and become a leader in the world of science and civilization, because it represents a real achievement. — Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie

According to the English scholar Richard Lloyd-Jones, some of the clay tablets deciphered from ancient Sumerian include complaints about the deteriorating writing skills of the young. — Steven Pinker

A thorough knowledge of the past could lead a profound scholar to predict the future course of history with great accuracy, provided that it did not turn out quite differently. — Aubrey Menen

Corliss had never once considered the fate of library books. She'd never wondered how many books go unread. She loved books. How could she not worry about the unread? She felt like a disorganized scholar, an inconsiderate lover, an abusive mother, and a cowardly soldier. — Sherman Alexie

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar. — Lao-Tzu

We really have to, as a country, recognize that school is where people get their identity not just as a scholar, or a future business person, but as a citizen. And we need to make sure that schools set them up for success as citizens. — Benjamin Jealous

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More's boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, 'Christ help you! — Hilary Mantel

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The high-ceilinged rooms, the little balconies, alcoves, nooks and angles all suggest sanctuary, escape, creature comfort. The reader, the scholar, the browser, the borrower is king. — David McCord

Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!
I often know amid the scholar's strife
A sinking feeling in my mind and heart.
How difficult the means are to be found
By which the primal sources may be breached;
And long before the halfway point is reached,
They bury a poor devil in the ground. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Theologian and scholar Walter Brueggemann writes beautifully in 'The Prophetic Imagination' that real hope comes only after despair. Only if we have tasted despair, only if we have known the deep sadness of unfulfilled dreams and promises, only if we can dare to look reality in the face and name it for what it is, can we dare to begin to imagine a better way.
Hope is subversive precisely because it dares to admit that all is not as it should be.
And so we are holding out for, working for, creating, prophesying, and living into something better
for the kingdom to come, for oaks of righteousness to tower, for leaves to blossom for the healing of the nations, for swords to be beaten into plowshares, for joy to come in the morning, and for redemption and justice. — Sarah Bessey

Eyeglasses had been in use since the turn of the century, allowing old people to read more in their later years and greatly extending the scholar's life of study. The manufacture of paper as a cheaper and more plentiful material than parchment was beginning to make possible multiple copies and wider distribution of literary works. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Help me," said Jesper. "We need to barricade the entrance."
The man behind the desk wore gray scholar's robes. His nostrils were flared so wide in effrontery that Jesper feared being sucked up one of them.
"Young man - " Jesper pointed his gun at the scholar's chest. "Move."
"Jesper!" his father said.
"Don't worry, Da. People point guns at each other all the time in Ketterdam. It's basically a handshake."
"Is that true?" his father asked as the scholar grudgingly moved aside and they shoved the heavy desk in front of the door.
"Absolutely," said Wylan.
"Certainly not ," said the scholar. — Leigh Bardugo

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat. — John Steinbeck

A combination of the qualities of the scholar, the master cook, the painter, the gastronomer, the sportsman and the pantologist, assisted by the skill of the bookmaker and etcher, will be required to compose the cookbook par excellence. — George Ellwanger

I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this I have learned; thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself. — Thomas Huxley

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher — Evelyn Waugh

The first priority of my life is to be holy, and the second goal of my life is to be a scholar. — John Wesley

I was not a good scholar, and during my last year at school I made little effort. This was not due to laziness ... , but to a state of youthful day-dreaming and indifference ... that was only ... pierced when creative desire enveloped me like ether. — Hermann Hesse

Yet Malone, remarkably, was a model of restraint compared with others, such as John Payne Collier, who was also a scholar of great gifts, but grew so frustrated at the difficulty of finding physical evidence concerning Shakespeare's life that he began to create his own, forging documents to bolster his arguments if not, ultimately, his reputation. He was eventually exposed when the keeper of mineralogy at the British Museum proved with a series of ingenious chemical tests that several of Collier's "discoveries" had been written in pencil and then traced over and that the ink in the forged passages was demonstrably not ancient. It was essentially the birth of forensic science. This was in 1859. — Bill Bryson

Oh, my little sister. What have you done?" "What?" I asked innocently. "It seems that something of great value to the Scholar has disappeared. At exactly the same time you did. He and the Chancellor have turned the citadelle upside down looking for it. All surreptitiously of course, because whatever was taken apparently isn't a catalogued piece of the royal collection. At least that's the rumor among the servants." I pressed my hands together and grinned. I couldn't hide my glee. Oh, how I wish I had seen the Scholar's face when he opened what he thought was his secret drawer and found it empty. Almost empty, that is. I'd left a little something for him. — Mary E. Pearson

The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic. — Harold Bloom

One of the advantages of having gone to Penn State was having had a scholar for a mentor - Philip Young. Also, a professional writer named Philip Klass taught there. He was a science fiction writer whose pseudonym was William Tenn. As a professional writer, he brought wisdom to teaching because he'd done it for a living. — David Morrell

Just as no one knows why the sun rises every morning, so is Faking Smart! an enigma that has grasped the imagination of tycoons and business scholars from all walks of life and from every corner of this massive sphere we call Earth. 'We don't know why it works,' quotes the FSRI. 'It just does! So, let's leave it at that. — Martin Fossum

Summary of the Torah, whilst standing on one leg: What is offensive when done to you, do not do it to your neighbor. The rest is commentary, now go and study (it). — Hillel The Elder- First-century Jewish Scholar

Gregg Braden is a rare blend of a scientist, visionary, and scholar, with the ability to speak to our minds, while touching the wisdom of our hearts. — Deepak Chopra

One scholar used sales figures from the French company Hennessy to estimate that Kim's annual cognac budget before the sanctions could have been as high as $800,000 a year. — Anonymous

Of the 417 commandments, only a single one of the 417 has found ministerial obedience; multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner & saint, scholar & ignoramus, Christian & savage are alike loyal. — Mark Twain

A friend introduced me to Bob Shaye. He was one of the most remarkable men I've ever met. He was a Fulbright scholar, an excellent chef, and very knowledgeable about the arts. — Wes Craven

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge

The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most precise and thoughtful scholar is limited in what he knows and wrong in some things that he affirms; the most devoted saint is stained with sin and full of error; the bravest heart among us will fail and break; but Christ is altogether lovely, holy, and unfailing. — Paul Washer

I often wonder what I will be remembered in history for. Scholar? Military hero? Builder? — Ferdinand Marcos

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint full as well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can learn disease!
Comment to Hans Sloane on Robert Boyle's letter of introduction describing Sloane as a 'ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist'. — Thomas Sydenham

I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn't like to watch television. I'm just the only one who confesses — Umberto Eco

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen. — John Millington Synge

I have given up the ambition to be a great scholar. I want to be more- simply a human ... We are not true humans, but beings who live by a civilization inherited from the past, that keeps us hostage, that confines us. No freedom of movement. Nothing. Everything in us is killed by our calculations for our future, by our social position and cast. You see, I am not happy-yet I am happy. I suffer, but that is part of life. I live, I don't care about my existence, and that is the beginning of wisdom. — Albert Schweitzer

I am a scholar of stupidity, so thanks for existing. — William C. Brown

Those who are fortunate to be educated, must light the flame of fire. — Lailah Gifty Akita

A few years back, an American Jewish feminist academic sent me a request for an interview... The professor presented herself as a gender scholar, another postmodernist discipline that fails to inspire my intellect. However, I was curious to see what a person who happens to be academically qualified in being a woman might come up with. — Gilad Atzmon

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw. — Frank McCourt

Every country has a cultural legacy and religious practices for reasons that I don't believe fall under the category of superstition, something that a religious scholar should understand. — Santosh Kalwar

I have a graduate degree from Penn State. I studied at Penn State under a noted Hemingway scholar, Philip Young. I had an interest in thrillers, and it occurred to me that Hemingway wrote many action scenes: the war scenes in 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' come to mind. But the scenes don't feel pulpy. — David Morrell

Speaking Mandarin with a Russian accent is extremely difficult. Of all the languages I have learned, Mandarin took me the longest, and having to replicate the suitable tones while simultaneously presenting myself as a rather bumbling Soviet scholar was an exercise that caused me considerable distress. In — Claire North