Pedantic Quotes

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  • If form is mechanically applied, it may indeed result in work that is conventional, if not pedantic or stupid. But form used well can become the very vehicle of freedom, of discovering the creative surprises that liberate mind-at-play.

    Stupid   Play   Creative  
    Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.84, Penguin
  • To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

    George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.14, Courier Corporation
  • 'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman.

    'Love for Love' (1695) act 5, sc. 3
  • The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.

    "R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams". Book by Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 243, letter to Lord Kennet (1941), 1964.
  • To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

    Writing   Choices   Style  
    William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics
  • Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?... Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves?

    World   Way   Fool  
  • Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

    People   Dull   Facts  
    A.A. Gill (2007). “The Angry Island: Hunting the English”, p.11, Simon and Schuster
  • Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.

    Song   Art   Dad  
    "Sean Lennon speaks". Interview with Joel Amos, www.sheknows.com. March 22, 2010.
  • A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.

    Death   Thinking   Design  
    Interview with Carlo Pescio, www.eptacom.net. June 1997.
  • Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

    Love   Running   Fool  
    'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Sun Rising'
  • Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.

    Mistake   Lying   Air  
    Jerome K. Jerome (2006). “Jerome K. Jerome: 14 Books in 1”, p.55, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax
  • For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

    Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Art of Literature: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.18, 谷月社
  • A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.

    Political   Done   Corny  
  • My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

    Uncles   Hero   Eye  
    Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.177, Univ of California Press
  • Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest.

    Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1999). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.84, Harvard University Press
  • I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

  • There is scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the exact - I will ever say pedantic - observance of the regular forms by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.

    Men   Guilt   Important  
    Winston Churchill (2015). “My African Journey”, p.42, Richard Clay & Sons
  • Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.

    Book   Nerd   Poor  
    "A History of Reading". Book by Alberto Manguel, 1996.
  • We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.

    Art   Mind   Needs  
    Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.8, Vintage
  • It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

    Drawing   Ideas   People  
    Edmund Burke (1963). “Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.201, Transaction Publishers
  • People sometimes think that defining a term is pedantic and useless, but terms need to be defined if they're going to be discussed, even if the terms are only defined for a single conversation. Those involved in the conversation need to know how the terms are being used.

    Thinking   People   Needs  
    "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.
  • We think that play and fairytales belong to childhood - how shortsighted that is! As though we would want at any time in our life to live without play and fairytales! We give these things other names, to be sure, and feel differently about them, but precisely this is the evidence that they are the same things, for the child too regards play as his work and fairy tales as his truth. The brevity of life ought to preserve us from a pedantic division of life into different stages - as though each brought something new.

  • You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.

    Real   Holiday   Thinking  
    Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: English traits”, p.176, Harvard University Press
  • I've been accused of being a little pedantic here and there, but I don't buy that criticism. I'm telling it like I see it. You don't have to buy it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to listen to it at all. I'm not trying to convince people of things, other than the fact that I'm trying to make as vivid as I can my own feelings and experiences.

    Source: progressive.org
  • The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people's directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues.

    People   Arabia   Levels  
    Freya Stark (2011). “A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen”, p.92, The Overlook Press
  • Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.

    Fashion   Ambition   Wish  
    Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The essays of Montaigne”
  • People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.

    Source: www.3ammagazine.com
  • In fact, on one occasion, a rather pedantic experimental psychologist was telling him about a long, complicated experiment he had done, incorporating all the proper controls and using considerable technical virtuosity. When he saw Crick's exasperated expression he said, "but Dr. Crick, we have got it right - we know it's right," Crick's response was, "The point is not whether it's right. The point is: does it even matter whether its right or wrong?"

    Pain   Expression   Long  
  • Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

    Men   Criticism   Pedants  
  • Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

    Love   Time   Rags  
    'Songs and Sonnets' 'The Sun Rising'
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