Sometimes you read a passage in a book and you just have to keep returning to it.  From the new novel The Angel’s Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, published by Doubleday:

“An intellectual is usually someone who isn’t exactly distinguished by his intellect,” Corelli asserted.  “He claims that label to compensate for his inadequacies.  It’s as old as that saying:  Tell me what you boast of and I’ll tell you what you lack.  Our daily bread.  The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as devout, usurers as benefactors, the smalled-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant, and the feeble-minded as intellectual.  Once again, it’s all the work of nature.  Far from being the sylph to whom poets sing, nature is a cruel, voracious mother who needs to feed on the creatures she gives birth to in order to stay alive.”

If anything can humble you, certainly this passage should.  Makes me wonder what label I claim?