“Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
“Nothing Like the Sun and the Enderby books prove that Burgess is as clever as he seems. His utopian satires, of which 1985 is yet another, mainly just seem clever. At a generous estimate there are half a dozen ideas in each of them.”
'Anthony Burgess in 1978'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)
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Clive James151
Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019Related quotes
“A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer
On Publishing
Writers at Work (1977)
Context: A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
16 February 1868
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
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.
Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King
Said during his exile in Peking, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci (June 1973), Intervista con la Storia (sixth edition, 2011). page 113.
Interviews
Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor
On Kippis; Gregory’s Life of Hall, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor
Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 3 (p. 219)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)
“Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.”
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
16 February 1868
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
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.