“A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.”

— Sei Shonagon , book The Pillow Book

Source: The Pillow Book
Source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (1002), p. 44

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Sei Shonagon 6

Japanese author and a court lady 966–1025

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El hombre habla de todo y habla de todo como si el conocimiento de todo estuviese todo en él.
Voces (1943)

“An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Foreign Affairs, July 1967.
1960s

“Cimourdain knew everything and nothing. He knew everything about science, and nothing at all about life. Hence his inflexibility.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Part 2, Book 1, Ch. 2
Ninety-Three (1874)
Context: Cimourdain was one of those men who have a voice within them, and who listen to it. Such men seem absent-minded; they are not; they are all attention.
Cimourdain knew everything and nothing. He knew everything about science, and nothing at all about life. Hence his inflexibility. His eyes were bandaged like Homer's Themis. He had the blind certainty of the arrow, which sees only the mark and flies to it. In a revolution, nothing is more terrible than a straight line. Cimourdain went straight ahead, as sure as fate.
Cimourdain believed that, in social geneses, the extreme point is the solid earth; an error peculiar to minds which replace reason with logic.

“With women in general he was truthful and sincere and would talk philosophy or Canon Law (Canon Law fascinated him, though what he knew of the subject was utter nonsense) to them on the slightest provocation. Women cannot understand honesty in a man.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

p21
Prose, Tarry Flynn (1948)

“Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book II, Ch. 17.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

“We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“He who desires everything, has nothing.”

Agnolo Firenzuola (1493–1543) Italian poet and litterateur

Chi tutto vuole, nulla non ha.
Act I., Scene II. — (Lucido Tolto).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 273.
I Lucidi (published 1549)

“With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)

“He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice… He knew the moves, he'd never played the game.”

Graham Greene book Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock (1938)

“A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knew everything.”

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Sei Shonagon 6

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