United States or Fiji ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
These smatterers are fond of showing off their acquirements upon all occasions, replying in English, as far as they are able, to every question asked in Hindostanee, and delivering their messages in all the words that they can muster.
Many people suppose that the scholar's life is in antagonism to the interests of religion, as though a university were somehow a bad place for a man's soul. But religion comes not to destroy the intellectual life. It wants not an empty mind but a full one. The perils of this age come not from scholars, but from smatterers; not from those who know much, but from those who think they "know it all."
Do we mean even that they know, in their own especial department, all that the smatterers of the next generation will know? Why, if we compare the little truth that we know with the infinite mass of truth which we do not know, we are all shallow together; and the greatest philosophers that ever lived would be the first to confess their shallowness.
There is not an Heroick Scribler in the Nation, that has not his Admirers who think him a great Genius; and as for your Smatterers in Tragedy, there is scarce a Man among them who is not cried up by one or other for a prodigious Genius. My design in this Paper is to consider what is properly a great Genius, and to throw some Thoughts together on so uncommon a Subject.
"I have often thought," observed Elinor, "that the spirit of mere dissipation must be less excusable in this country than in Europe. Society must have so many attractions there more general finish more high accomplishment." "Yes; we want more of the real thing; we have smatterers enough as it is," replied Mr. Ellsworth. "And then the decorations are so well got up in Europe!" exclaimed Mrs.
Then your huddling together in a critical dictionary a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers in freethinking. But what mischief have you not done to human society!
The cultivation necessary, however, is not that which consists in forcing the whole body of the people to become conceited smatterers; but that which provides a full supply of models for mediocrity to copy, and for talent to rival.
But to return to our ancient Poems in Picture, I would humbly propose, for the Benefit of our modern Smatterers in Poetry, that they would imitate their Brethren among the Ancients in those ingenious Devices.
On the contrary, most of the smatterers in criticism, who appear among us, make it their business to vilify and depreciate every new production that gains applause, to descry imaginary blemishes, and to prove, by farfetched arguments, that what pass for beauties in any celebrated piece are faults and errors.
Whatever he thought when he wrote this, I leave it to them to discuss; for my own part, I follow those fat, fleshy, and vulgarly approved doctors, with whom, by Jupiter! a great part of the learned had rather err than follow them that understand the tongues, though they are never so much in the right. Not any of them make greater account of those smatterers at Greek than if they were daws.
Word Of The Day