The Quotable Intellectual: 1,200 Bon Mots, Ripostes, and Witticisms for Aspiring Academics, Armchair Philosophers?And Anyone Else Who Wants to Sound Really Smart »

Peter Archer is an editor at Adams Media. He subscribes to the New Yorker, the Economist, and the New York Review of Books; keeps a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy on his nightstand; and has an M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews. Which makes him as much of a pseudointellectual as he needs to be to write this book.

Have you ever wanted to be an intellectual, without all that tedious work of getting an advanced college degree? Here's your shortcut to the world of the well read. Just open this collection of 1,417 quotations from the mouths of the wildly famous to the painfully obscure, and voila!—instant erudition.

It doesn't take much to sound as if you know what you're talking about. Just toss off some time-tested wisdom from Henry James or Plotinus . . . or, if you're feeling daring, a line or two of poetry from Byron. In no time at all you-ll be sipping a glass of Madeira, sampling imported Gouda, and bragging about your collection of first edition Vonneguts.

Just like an intellectual.