Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as strong to think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every expansion. The mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every individual.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
—Théophile Gautier
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
—Oscar Wilde
An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
—Dan Rather
An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
—Aldous Huxley
If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be too cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
—Annie Dillard
There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn't really hit you.
—Jesse Andrews in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl