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“I am nothing but a dilettante,
a dilettante in painting, in poetry, in music, and several other of the
so-called unprofitable arts.
Above all else I am a dilettante in life
Up to the present I have lived as I have painted and written poetry.
I never
got far beyond the preparation, the plan, the first act, the first stanza.
There are people like that who begin everything, and never finish anything.
I am
such a one.”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

“The whole course of things being thus entirely changed between us and the ancients, and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method, to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present is two-fold: either first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance. Or secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For, to enter the palace of learning at the great gate, requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door.”
― Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Satires

“No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth...”
― Isaac Asimov, The Currents of Space

“It is better to be foolish than a dilettante.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Principia Humanitas

“It all comes to this: if you take care not to be a man of action, if you seek peace in solitude, you will find that life's vicissitudes fall upon you from within and it is upon that stage you must prove yourself a hero or a fool.”
― Thomas Mann, Six Early Stories

“Omnivore, omnifume, omniboit, omnivoit. Ne znaš odabrati, to je uvijek nedostatak izvrsnosti. Zato si ti svaštar. To je netko kome je sve lijepo. Život je za takve prekratak. Condition humaine to ne dopušta. Doista lijepim možeš smatrati samo ono u što se stvarno razumiješ. Onaj koji ne odabire, zaglavit će. Nemar, nedostatak pažnje, bez pravog razumijevanja ičega, prljava strana dilentatizma. Druga polovina dvadesetog stoljeća. Više šansi za sve. Više ljudi zna manje o više stvari. Širenje znanja na što široj razini. Tko se želi klizati, propada kroz led.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“It is not what we pretend to love, but what we really love, that makes a way for us.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“That word, which has an almost entirely pejorative meaning today as a hopelessly superficial dabbler, is derived from the Italian dilettare, which means “to delight.�� As the art historian Bruce Redford notes, “dilettante”—one who exhibits delight—entered English with the formation of the Society of Dilettanti, an eighteenth-century group of Englishmen who had returned from the grand tour brimming with enthusiasm for Continental art and culture. As the process of acquiring knowledge gradually became more specialized, Redford notes, the meaning of the word shifted. By the time George Eliot wrote Middlemarch in the early 1870s, the word had become an insult.”
― Tom Vanderbilt, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning