Wise quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow."
"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."
"Though pedantry denies, It's plain the Bible means That Solomon grew wise While talking with his queens."
"The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show."
"Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain: Lest sorrow lend me words and words express, The manner of my pity-wanting pain."
"There is dignity in suffering; nobility in pain; but failure is a salted wound, that burns and burns again!"
"Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny."
"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant"
"Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple."
"A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him."
"No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had"
"A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle."
"The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false."
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."
"Perfection in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is neither required nor expected in these agents (public servants). It belongs not to man. The wise know too well their weaknesses to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows."
"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.""
"It takes pride to be anxious – I am not wise enough to know how my life should go."
"Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection."
"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!"
"The man who is truly wise knows that he knows very little."
