Wit & Attitude Quote by William Alexander

There is a deliberate sting in Alexander's confession: the harder the mind works, the more humiliating its trophy becomes. The line stages learning as a kind of moral booby trap. "Great toil", "long experience", "learned schools" pile up like credentials on a resume, only to be punctured by the anticlimax: all that effort earns the knowledge that knowledge is "but vain". It's not anti-intellectualism so much as a critique of intellectual vanity, the ego that mistakes accumulation for wisdom.

The syntax does part of the argument. Alexander makes you trudge through the heavy march of clauses before delivering the deflation, mimicking the very labor he describes. The repetition of "know" turns self-awareness into a loop: the mind can only certify its own limits by using the same tools it distrusts. That reflexivity is the point. Wisdom isn't a possession here; it's a posture, a readiness to be corrected.

Calling the self-proclaimed wise "greatest fools" sharpens the subtext into social commentary. Alexander is writing in a culture that prized learned display - courtly polish, scholastic pedigree, theological disputation - where "being seen as clever" could be currency. The line reads like a preemptive strike against pedants and ambitious courtiers alike, a reminder that education can become a performance that blinds the performer. The intended humility is also a warning: the loudest certainty often signals the thinnest understanding.