Wise quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself."
"It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business."
"Those alone are wise who know how to love."
"If you expect the wise man to be as angry as the baseness of crimes requires, then he must not only be angry but go insane."
"If you are wise, You will mingle one thing with the other- Not hoping without doubt; Not doubting without hope."
"The wise man lives as long as he should, not just as long as he likes."
"I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise."
"One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'."
"You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes you'll see."
"The wise form right judgment of the present from what is past."
"No greater evil can a man endure Than a bad wife, nor find a greater good Than one both good and wise; and each man speaks As judging by the experience of his life."
"There is no such thing as the old age of the wise."
"The more women there are about, the softer a wise man steps."
"A wise ruler takes advice, but should never be seen to take it. Let them think you know more than you do. It will not harm them, and it will help you."
"Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support."
"When facts speak, the wise man listens."
"Everything that goes around comes around, they say, and although I've never been able to figure out who the mysteriously wise sages known as "they" might be, they're certainly right when it comes to time-travel."
"I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened."
"It's an absolute myth that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Of course it doesn't."
"If Henry James were still with us, he'd not only approve of Paris, He Said, he could have written it himself, though without his serpentine syntax. It's a delicious treat, studded with wise and beautifully observed detail, that places side by side those perpetually fascinating antagonists, the eager, casual American and the meticulous, pleasure-driven French. Christine Sneed knows everyone's intimate secrets and her book is lively, amusing, and, ultimately, kind to pretty much all of them."
