He was an egotistical scholar, a deep well of scientific knowledge whose pulley screeched when you tried to draw something out of it. In a word, he was a miser.
"I wonder now if even then Saruman was not turning to evil ways. But at any rate he used to give no trouble to his neighbours. I used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind."
(JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings")
"Well, now, I've known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of him—any ideas, you know."
(George Eliot's "Middlemarch")
