Scholarly Engagement Quotes

However, I should perhaps add that during the 20 years I have been back in Cambridge, I have been actively involved in the teaching of undergraduates, as well as of course supervising research students.

Leisure without study is death, and the grave of a living man.

The ideological posturing, moral nitpicking, and clique formation that occur in places such as academic Twitter have more to do with crafting a scene than building a movement. And scholars, of all people, should be able to recognize these dynamics, call them into question, and make more reasonable decisions about how to engage with their colleagues, whether in agreement or debate.

If you are a man of learning, read something classic, a history of the human struggle and don't settle for mediocre verse.

I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.

I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process.

How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?

For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed, Of Aristotle and his philosophie, Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

This was a time of great intellectual excitement for me. Both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas.

There is a certain comfort that comes from feeling intellectually apart from phenomena. That you have the luxury of time to reflect or apply scholarly thinking to art and culture.