“Now one rather annoying thing about scholars is that they are always using Big Words that some of us can't understand…and one sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something. After all, from the scholarly point of view, it's practically a crime not to know everything.”

— Benjamin Hoff , book The Tao of Pooh

Spelling Tuesday.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

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Benjamin Hoff 32

American writer 1946

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“Dear premies, I guess this is the last night of this festival, of this Guru Puja and really, what have we understood? Really, in one way, what can we understand? What is there to understand? And it's just like sometimes you just feel, Understand? When I use the word understand … But there is nothing to understand! And if there is something to understand, there is only one thing to understand, and that is to surrender!”

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“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

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“So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.”

Stephen Chbosky (1970) American writer

“Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something more, and that Something More is what life is really all about.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Spelling Tuesday.
Source: The Tao of Pooh (1982)

“You can't know what it is like for us now--you will always be one step behind.

Be thankful for that.

You can't know what it was like for us then--you will always be one step ahead.

Be thankful for that, too.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

“One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

J 85
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

“As soon as we have contrived to give our pupil an idea of the word "Useful," we have got an additional means of controlling him, for this word makes a great impression on him, provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age, and provided he clearly sees its relation to his own well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand, and because other people always undertake to supply their needs so that they never require to think for themselves, and do not know what utility is. "What is the use of that?"”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

“The Maharaja was not only a great scholar but also liked the company of scholars and to listen to their words of wisdom and knowledge. He used to arrange study circles regularly in a serene place in the City.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

A.V. Narasimha Murthy, in "When the Maharaja’s son failed an examination".

“Scholars are still in search of the exact meaning of certain speeches in each of Shakespeare’s great tragedies — and we should like to assume that those who saw these plays for the first time did not have perfect understanding of all of the lines — but so great was Shakespeare’s power to conceive of action from which thought and feeling can be readily inferred that all of us know Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth more intimately than we know many men whose remarks we understand perfectly.”

Norman Maclean (1902–1990) American author and scholar

"Episode, Scene, Speech, and Word : The Madness of Lear", in Critics and Criticism : Ancient and Modern (1952), edited by R.S. Crane

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating… but there are other ways to understanding.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

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