People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Erudition: Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the world's eye.