“TRUE BEAUTY IS MEASURED BY THE NUMBER OF PEARLS WITHIN YOU, NOT AROUND YOUR NECK.”
“I have suffered from being alone, but because I have been able to keep my secret I have overcome the suffering of loneliness. To go right to the end implies knowing how to keep one s secret. And, today, there is no greater joy than to live alone and unknown. My deepest joy is to write. To accept the world and to accept pleasure—but only when I am stripped bare of everything. I should not be worthy to love the bare and empty beaches if I could not remain naked in the presence of myself. For the first time I can understand the meaning of the word happiness without any ambiguity. It is a little different from what men normally mean when they say: i am happy.”
“He finds he likes to be thought of as intelligent, if only because it makes his interactions with other people more legible. He likes when someone is struggling to remember the name of a book or an author, and he can provide it for them readily.”
“Sometimes what looks intelligence to you is just a common sense for someone smarter than you.”
“One must learn to embrace the expertise of others, just like one expects one s own expertise to be embraced by others.”
“But what is intelligence? Is intelligence calculations and computations? Or must true intelligence contain a moral component? Each passing minute, I believe more that this is the case.”
“[About her father s friend Lilian Pirie] She was one of the few people I have met whom I consider had a really interesting mind. . . . Young people always flocked to her house and were happy to talk to her. To spend an afternoon with her, even when she was well over seventy, was a wonderful refreshment. I think she had, more perfectly than anyone I have ever known, the art of leisure. You found her sitting in a high-backed chair in her beautiful room, usually engaged with some needlework of her own design, some interesting book or other by her side. She had the air of having time to talk with you all day, all night, for months on end. Her criticisms were caustic and clear. Although she would talk about any abstract subject under the sun she seldom indulged in personalities.”
“Wisdom is from God. Anything outside that is intellect.”
“A lot is said about the serious by the fact that the most intelligent person around is almost always the most playful.”
“Envy is the first emotion fools experience whenever they see a genius.”
“the blindest people think they can see the most”
“Only those who are intelligent can change their minds. The rest are damaged permanently due to indoctrination. A lower IQ makes a person less malleable.”
“Of course, IQ is not the same as being educated. IQ measures the ability to learn, comprehend, and problem solve. Education is the process of acquiring knowledge. These are two separate things, although not entirely unrelated. For example, a person with a superior IQ learns at a faster pace, thus can acquire knowledge faster. However, a person with a superior education can easily outsmart someone with a genius IQ who’s lacking knowledge.”
“We all have the little grey cells. And so few of us know how to use them.”
“I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security.”
“Effective communication happens when two people seek each other for greater intelligence.”
“I like to look around me and see all the books, all the possibilities. I don’t ever want to be the smartest person in the room. As long as I have books around me, I won’t be.”