Literary notes about Intellectual (AI summary)
The term “intellectual” in literature is a multifaceted one, often invoked to signify both the elevation of rational thought and a critique of abstract detachment. Authors have employed the word to celebrate the capacities of the mind—its potential for expansion, learning, and nuanced critique—as seen in references to intellectual growth and adaptability ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]). Conversely, it can also suggest an excess or a certain aloofness: figures overwhelmed by knowledge or ensnared in mental abstraction that borders on torment ([7], [8], [9]). In some works, being called an intellectual is a badge of honor, embodying cultivated sensibilities and refined judgment ([10], [11], [12]), while in others it becomes an emblem for elitism or moral detachment. This dual usage underscores literature’s ongoing exploration of the merits and limits of the mind’s pursuits.
- He had a passion for intellectual expansion.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden - Above all, the intellectual element in a habit fixes the relation of the habit to varied and elastic use, and hence to continued growth.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - But intellectual tools are indefinitely more flexible in their range of adaptation than other mechanical tools.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - The intellectual and social context has now changed.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - It remains to say a few words upon subject matter as social, since our prior remarks have been mainly concerned with its intellectual aspect.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - But it should contribute through the type of intellectual and emotional disposition which it forms to the improvement of those conditions.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.
— from Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution by Rafael Sabatini - His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if pure thought was pain.
— from The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton - But this is not a religious work, and I must submit to those very narrow intellectual limits which the absence of theology always imposes.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - I believe, said Pantagruel, that all intellectual souls are exempted from Atropos’s scissors.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - "And it's all because I am an intellectual and cultivated man!
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - One of the most intellectual men I ever met.
— from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
