Intellectual Fulfillment Quotes

A table is not blessed if it has fed no scholars.

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Man cannot live by bread alone. Man after all is composed of intellect and soul.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge - broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness comes to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.

Reading is by far the most successful pursuit of happiness.

We shall quench our thirst, for we shall drink deep at the bubbling fountain of Wisdom.

A man who has tasted with profound enjoyment the pleasure of agreeable society will eat with a greater appetite than he who rode horseback for two hours. An amusing lecture is as useful for health as the exercise of the body.

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.

The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.

The Life of the intellect is the best and pleasantest for man, because the intellect more than anything else is the man. Thus it will be the happiest life as well.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

A second-class mind dealing with third-class material is hardly a necessity of life.

An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best. Such a life has not been granted me.

The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.

I have never yet heard any middle-aged man or woman who worked with his or her brains express any regret for the passing of youth.

This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals

I think that's what turns young men and women into writers - the happiness you discover living in books.

And feeling clever, I've always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.

And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.