People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws. – G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. – Henry David Thoreau

The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation. He is the worlds eye. – Ralph Waldo Emerson