James Fenton

For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French forms on the other. The choice is between the nullity and vanity of our first efforts, and the developing of a sense of idiom, form, structure, metre, rhythm, line - all the fundamental characteristics of this verbal art.

British Poet

Rutger Bregman

The greatest sin of the academic left is that it has become fundamentally aristocratic, writing in bizarre jargon that makes cliches seem abstruse. If you can't explain your ideal to a fairly intelligent 12-year-old, it's probably your own fault.

Dutch Historian

Arthur Conan Doyle

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

British Writer

Alastair Reynolds

When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader.

British Author

Victoria Coren Mitchell

Ed Miliband should be out and proud about his abstruse interests, his Master's in Economics, his political obsession, his prioritising of the mental over the physical.

English Writer

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology.

British Historian

The term 'abstruse' is typically used in formal or academic settings rather than everyday conversations.

Not for Casual Talk

'Abstruse' often suggests a high level of understanding or expertise is required to comprehend the subject.

Shows Expertise

When something is described as abstruse, expect to put in effort to understand it.

Expect Effort

 that this was so central to the religious life. Because with a few wonderful exceptions, very often when religious people come together, religious leaders come together, they're arguing about abstruse doctrines or uttering a council of hatred

Karen Armstrong: Let's...

 create value is not actually to improve the food still further it's to get rid of the smell and clean up the floor and it's vital we understand this if that seems like a sort of strange abstruse thing in the UK the post office had a