“Never be clever for the sake of being clever
For the sake of showing off.”
Glenn Gould (1932–1982) Canadian pianist
"So You Want To Write A Fugue", work's text
“To show a longing for anything that one cannot have, for instance, is not a clever position.”
Source: The Signature of All Things
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Elizabeth Gilbert232
American writer 1969Related quotes
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Context: Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every convention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in their eyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purely natural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man of talent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in the individual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much as feeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man is not mockable, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, nor esteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others to respect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is the result of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
“If you’re that clever you can argue yourself into anything.”
Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending
Source: The Sense of an Ending
“You’ll never fashion anything clever by drinking water!”
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Pytine ("The Wineflask")
“Von dem Bach is so clever he can do anything, get around anything.”
Erich von dem Bach (1899–1972) German politician and SS functionary
Adolf Hitler, as quoted in The Simon and Schuster Encyclopedia of World War II (1978) by Thomas D. Parrish and Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, p. 45