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“Choose what interests you.”
Bennett recommends beginning intellectual cultivation with a subject capable of sustaining real attention instead of selecting study solely for appearance or prestige.
Source note: Mental Efficiency, discussion of reading and self-development. The short imperative belongs to Bennett’s practical advice about choosing a field for sustained personal study.
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“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Voice: Fictional character · Polonius
The line praises compression: saying less can sharpen meaning when the words that remain do real work.
Source note: Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2; Polonius says this while promising the King and Queen he will be brief, immediately before continuing at comic length. The dramatic irony is part of the line’s context.
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“Others form man; I only report him.”
Rather than presenting an ideal model of humanity, Montaigne describes a particular changing self and makes observation central to his method.
Source note: Essays of Montaigne, Book III, Charles Cotton translation, in his explanation of the project of the Essays.
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“Of making many books there is no end.”
The ancient observation sounds surprisingly modern: written material can multiply without limit, so discernment matters as much as sheer volume.
Source note: Ecclesiastes 12:12 in the King James Version; excerpt from the verse’s warning about endless book-making and study.
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“I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.”
The satirical speaker portrays restraint as refusing to escalate a literary attack, answering hostility with a comic wish that the critic’s need might be relieved.
Source note: Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot; Pope recalls Gildon’s attack and presents his own non-response in a deliberately witty, self-defending passage.
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“My intellectual horizon is infinitely wide.”
Intellectual possibility is framed as expansive because reading, thought, language, and imagination can continue enlarging a person’s world beyond immediate sensation.
Source note: The World I Live In; Keller rejects the assumption that sensory disability fixes the boundaries of intellectual life.