Wise Quotes

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.

The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching.

You know, it's amazing to me the wounds we carry for eternity. But what has fascinated me most these last few years is how the right person can heal them. I remember a wise man once said to me that everyone deserves to be loved. Even you. (Zarek)

I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

There are questions I'm still not wise enough to answer, just wise enough to no longer ask.

How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.

Anyone can find fault. It is the wise person who finds that which encourages another in the turmoils and strifes of the day.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have.

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

The truth is more important than the facts.

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

The proper, wise balancing of one's whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

Don't you think it's sometimes wise not to grow up.

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

If you have it and you know you have it, then you have it. If you have it and don't know you have it, you don't have it. If you don't have it but you think you have it, then you have it.

Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.

I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.

What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.

Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men.

Don't waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window- or break down a door.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.

Even more than the time when she gave birth, a mother feels her greatest joy when she hears others refer to her son as a wise learned one.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.

Avoid him who talks sweetly before you but tries to ruin you behind your back, for he is like a pitcher of poison with milk on top.

If you want something said, ask a man...if you want something done, ask a woman.

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

A wise man can be a fool in love.

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme, I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy, and wise in spite of themselves.

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure.

How do you know so much about everything?' was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was 'By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.'

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passions, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

Should we grieve over a little misplaced charity, when an all knowing, all wise Being showers down every day his benefits on the unthankful and undeserving?

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.

The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.

Women desire six things: They want their husbands to be brave, wise, rich, generous, obedient to wife, and lively in bed.

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.

You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?

Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.

Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more.

The Wise Man believes profoundly in silence - the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astire on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shinning pool-his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. Silence is the cornerstone of character.

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise and thou art happy.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The choice we face is not, as many imagine, between heaven and hell. Rather, the choice is between heaven and this world. Even a fool would exchange hell for heaven; but only the wise will exchange this world for heaven.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

A wise traveller never despises his own country.

Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.

The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Ful wys is he that kan himselve knowe.

The busy man is never wise and the wise man is never busy.

Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear.

Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury of many and varied interests.

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

First, to be able to love, then to learn that body and spirit are one.

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from nature becomes hard.

The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

God cannot be referred to as 'good,' 'better,' or 'best' because He is above all things. If a man says that God is wise, the man is lying because anything that is wise can become wiser. Anything that a man might say about God is incorrect... The best a man can do is to remain silent...The true master knows that if he had a God he could understand, he would never hold Him to be God.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.

He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.

Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.

A man remains ignorant because he loves ignorance, and chooses ignorant thoughts; a man becomes wise because he loves wisdom and chooses wise thoughts.

Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

It costs nothing to ask wise advice from a good friend.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.

There is no object that we see; no action that we do; no good that we enjoy; no evil that we feel, or fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage of all: and he that makes such improvement is wise, as well as pious.

Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys.

Even the wisest men make fools of themselves about women, and even the most foolish women are wise about men

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity — an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.

Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

The lips of the wise are as the doors of a cabinet; no sooner are they opened, but treasures are poured out before thee.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Adversity makes a man wise, not rich.

The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love.

Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment.

To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; Skill is knowing how to do it, and Virtue is doing it.

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.

He that is not handsome at 20, nor strong at 30, nor rich at 40, nor wise at 50, will never be handsome, strong, rich or wise.

The good and wise lead quite lives

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

By reason of gifts and bribes the offices be given to rich men, which should rather have been executed by wise men.

No man is wise enough by himself.

We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.

Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

True conservation provides for wise use by the general public. The American people do not want our resources preserved for the exclusive use of the wealthy. These land and water resources belong to the people, and people of all income levels should have easy access to them.

A wise unselfishness is not a surrender of yourself to the wishes of anyone, but only to the best discoverable course of action.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

A wise man will be master of his mind, a fool will be its slave.

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.

Better is to bow than breake.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others.

I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.

Even the wise need wisdom.

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.

A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.

There is no genius who hasn't a touch of insanity.

It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.

Hitting a shorter club to these greens means a great, great deal. Younger players are so much more capable length-wise.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.

God bless our good and gracious King,Whose promise none relies on;Who never said a foolish thing,Nor ever did a wise one.

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration.

The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places, and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the the mind upwards, can form an artificial solitude; retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.

As for me, all I know is I know nothing.

What happens style wise behind closed doors, in your home, shouldn't be incidental. Home isn't just where you stow your things or sack out for the night. It should be your private escape.

Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity. the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.

These two are not two Love has made them one Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery Each is no less but more.

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.

That is a good question for you to ask, not a wise question for me to answer.

A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.

In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!

Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately.

Every fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying.

Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'Tis good to be merry and wise.

The wise make proverbs, and fools repeat them.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

My father was extremely loving to me and funny and wise and understanding, and at other times extremely demanding, critical, calculating, exacting. When you're a young woman, I think you want to please a lot, so maybe you accept more of the criticism than you would as an older person. But criticism can be very wounding. It certainly was to me.

And in the endthe love you takeis equal tothe love you make

After crosses and losses men grow humbler and wiser.

Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.

Will it not be wise to allow the friendship between nations to rest upon deep and permanent things? Irritations of the cuticle must not be confounded with heart failure.

Delay not till tomorrow to be wise; tomorrow's sun to thee may neve rise.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress.

It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary.

Develop a built-in bullshit detector.

It's been very nice. I haven't gotten out too much because we've been working a lot but other wise the people have been very nice and I've had a good time.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may becom

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

History admires the wise, but elevates the brave

Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't — if you are wise — talk down to any audience.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

It is always wise, as it is also fair, to test a man by the standards of his own day, and not by those of another.

Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

Every time a message seems to grab us, and we think, 'I just might try it,' we are at the nexus of choice and persuasion that is advertising.

Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.

Wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.

He who thinks himself wise, O heavens! is a great fool.

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!

I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself.

What I cannot love, I overlook.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

What does not kill you makes you stronger.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.

Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise, And the door stood open at our feast, When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes, And a man with his back to the East.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

To have begun is half the job; be bold and be sensible.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends....

The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.