Quotes About Wise

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.

I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright.

A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?

Every wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service.

To become wise you have to want to experience certain experiences, and so to run into their open jaws. This is very dangerous, tobe sure; many a "wise man" has been eaten up in doing so.

O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

All I have learned in life really just boils down to this: there is only one difference between the so-called wise and the so-called foolish...and between those who are truly happy and those who are not. Those who are wise - and those who are happy - embrace and appreciate life. Those who are unhappy and unwise do not. That is all; that is the only difference.

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, counselor, wise friend, or therapist. My own wise friend is my dog.

Time cannot be recycled. When a moment has gone, it is really gone. Wise time management is really wise management of ourselves.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

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

Looking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity.

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

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Part of living, part of becoming a wise man or a wise woman, is to get to that point where you can have a friend for whom you are genuinely happy when he or she has a success. That's tough. Very few people get to that point. With writers it's next to impossible. You can't really bless a writer who's as good as yourself.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

Wise is what you want to be. Smart is easy compared to wise.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

We find that at present the human race is divided politically into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become politicians; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly out-numbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off behind the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare.

Do not be wise in words - be wise in deeds.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.

Then Christ will say to us, 'Come you also! Come you drunkards! Come you weaklings! Come you depraved!' And he will say to us, 'Vile creatures, you in the image of the beast and you who bear his mark. All the same, you come too!' And the wise and prudent will say, 'Lord, why are you welcoming them? And he will say, 'O wise and prudent, I am welcoming them because not one of them has ever judged himself worthy. And he will stretch out his arms to us, and we shall fall at his feet, and burst into sobs, and then we shall understand everything, everything! Lord, your kingdom come!

There's strong men of wisdom in many different fields. They say 5% of the people are wise and righteous and 10% are wise but use their wiseness for wickedness or to deceive others. It's like a magician: he knows the answer to the trick, but you don't. He has to keep you blind to the truth in order for the illusion to work. When you've got that kind of wisdom and somebody else doesn't, you can always take advantage of them.

If we walk with the wise, we will grow wise.

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

To sense when a teenager needs understanding and when misunderstanding is a difficult and delicate task. The sad truth is that no matter how wise we are, we cannot be right for any length of time in our teenagers' eyes.

The mind always functions in an eccentric way, the mind is always an idiot. The really intelligent person has no mind. Intelligence arises out of no-mind, idiocy out of the mind. Mind is idiotic, no-mind is wise. No-mind is wisdom, intelligence. Mind depends on knowledge, on methods, on money, on experience, on this and that. Mind always needs props, it needs supports, it cannot exist on its own. On its own, it flops.

My message to the serious programmer is this: spend a part of your working day examining and refining your own methods. Even though programmers are always struggling to meet some future or past deadline, methodological abstraction is a wise long term investment.

The weak have remedies, the wise have joys; superior wisdom is superior bliss.

Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will.

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.

But if you'll prosper, mark what I advise, Whom age, and long experience render wise.

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know... that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves... the same as all Gods have done before you.

One who has not only the four S's, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example... Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.

We share a lot in common, attitude wise.

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.

There are plenty of fools in the world; but if they had not been sent for some wise purpose, they wouldn't have been here; and since they are here they have as good a right to have elbow-room in the world as the wisest.

When men succeed, even their neighbors think them wise.

After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it.

Wise people build their lives around what is eternal and squeeze in what is temporary. Not the other way around.

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

Strange star-like object over Oslo right before Obama arrives. A gift of a golden medal given by a group of wise men... Nah.

Do your homework or hire wise experts to help you. Never jump into a business you have no idea about.

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.

As a bee gathering nectar does not harm or disturb the color & fragrance of the flower; so do the wise move through the world.

The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to degradation. . . . If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?