Wise quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Lucius Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset. The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?"
"The wise man never loses his temper."
"We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends."
"I'm a leader. I'm the leader of this team, and they look for me at any point in the game, and that's not just scoring-wise, I do other things."
"Few things are needed to make a wise man happy; nothing can make a fool content; that is why most men are miserable."
"No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them."
"There is no accident so unfortunate but wise men will make some advantage of it, nor any so entirely fortunate but fools may turn it to their own prejudice."
"To think to be wise alone is a very great folly."
"Behind many acts that are thought ridiculous there lie wise and weighty motives."
"Few are sufficiently wise to prefer censure which is useful to praise which is treacherous."
"It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly."
"Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major."
"If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise or any such thing, the starting point is this : God is."
"It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least."
"Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity."
"But let the wise be warned against too great readiness to explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong."
"Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in."
"Wise books For half the truths they hold are honored tombs."
"Ah! but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
"Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity."
