This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism…the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young." - Henry Seidel Canby
"Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge." - Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson
"There are many shining qualities on the mind of man; but none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, and sets them at work in their proper places, and turns them to the advantage of their possessor. Without it, learning is pedantry; wit, impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness; and the best parts only qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own prejudice. Though a man has all other perfections and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life." - Joseph Addison
"Striking at the root of pedantry and opinionative assurance would be no hindrance to the world’s improvement." - Joseph Glanvill