It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61).

Among other possibilities, money was invented to make it possible for a foolish man to control wise men; a weak man, strong men; a child, old men; an ignorant man, knowledgeable men; and for a dwarf to control giants.

I am a great scholar, my mind is full of wonders.

But you can't fault me on my footnotes. I've worked hard on them and they look pretty impressive. And almost all the sources I quote actually exist. I must confess, however, that the idea of putting footnotes in chapter 5, the autobiographical chapter, started out simply as a joke. Who but a biblical scholar would think of footnoting an autobiography? But the joke quickly got out of hand and become a significant part of that chapter. I plan someday to write a scholarly article consisting of a single sentence and a twenty-page footnote.

It would behoove you to have your thesis finely tuned and the logical arguments utilized in support of it tightly woven into a credible, and creatively persuasive tapestry.

To be no more than scholarly reflection on its object from one particular standpoint, which is anyway one legitimate standpoint among others.

To be knowledgeable, sit before scholars; to be wise, sit before life.

It is never late to earn a degree, masters or doctorate. Learning has no age limit. All age groups are welcome to the act of learning.