Wise quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"You’re just the romantic age,” she continued- “fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is- oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty.” - Hildegarde"
"If wine tells truth - and so have said the wise, It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!"
"If I ever acquire wisdom, I suppose I'll be wise enough to know what to do with it."
"The wise man is one who knows what he does not know."
"This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name which is wise, and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal which is also very wise. No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time to trying to understand it."
"Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience."
"There will always be One against All, one person against all others. [This is so] not because One is terribly wise and All are terribly foolish, but because the process of thinking and researching, which finally yields truth, can only be accomplished by an individual person. In its singularity or duality, one human being seeks and finds – not the truth (Lessing) –, but some truth."
"The fool who recognizes his foolishness, is a wise man. But the fool who believes himself a wise man, he really is a fool."
"Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are wise words when spoken, but fruitless these words are when not carried out by the speaker."
"Let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove."
"... the yearly expenses of the existing religious systemexceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?"
"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all."
"Wise men say, and not without reason, that whosoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past."
"Look deep into the hearts of men, and see what delights and disgusts the wise."
"We study history not to be clever in another time, but to be wise always."
"A person who is wise does nothing against their will, nothing with sighing or under coercion."
"Anyway, when I got out of the Army, I went to see a therapist. And she said, what seems to be the trouble? And I said I want to give all my money away. And she said, how much do you have? And I said, I owe $300. She stared at me for several seconds, and she said, I see. Well, let's get to work. And maybe by the time you do have some money, you'll be wise enough to know what to do with it."
"It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination."
"Few things are needful to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; - and this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable."
"...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't."
