Montaigne Yanks My Chain

So let’s say you’re going through Montaigne’s Essays, essentially cherry-picking quotes for a magazine piece you’re working on, and you come to this passage:

Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad.