“What is really lost when a civilization wearies and grows small is confidence, a confidence built on the order and balance that leisure makes possible.”—Thomas Cahill,
How the Irish Saved Civilization“There is a kind of pedantry common to all the crafts which derives from the exaggeration and intemperance of those who practice them, making those affected by it seem extravagant and ridiculous. We smile with indulgence upon those drudges of the "republic of letters" who bury themselves in the learned dust of antiquity for the good of knowledge, bestow the light from this darkness upon the human
race, and commune with the dead (whom they know intimately) for the benefit of the living, whom they scarcely know. This pedantry, which is excusable somehow in scholars of the first order (prevented by their profession from circulating in the civilized world) is entirely unbearable in military men for just the opposite reason. A soldier is pedantic when he is too meticulous, when he blusters, or when he plays the Don Quixote. These faults render him as ridiculous in his profession as a musty appearance and Latin affectations do a scholar.”—Frederick the Great,
Anti-Machiavel "You must not think that these priests were idle, or occupied only with sacrifices. An altogether greater responsibility and a greater burden
