Just when I'm getting used to the idea that I'm not as smart as I think I am, I learn from Harold Bloom's Hamlet: Poem Unlimited that I'm also less intelligent than a fictional character:

• "Vastly intelligent, far beyond us--if we are not, say, Freud or Wittgenstein--Hamlet cannot believe that the proper use of his capability and godlike reason is to perform a revenge killing." (p. 70)
• "Don't condescend to the Prince of Denmark: he is more intelligent than you are, whoever you are." (p. 86)
• "If Hamlet perishes of the truth, such truth is barely external. Hamlet is the truth, insofar as any hero of consciousness can be." (p. 94)