Wise Quotes

Some wisdom you must learn from one who's wise.

~ Euripides

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

I'm not wise, but the beginning of wisdom is there; it's like relaxing into - and an acceptance of - things.

~ Tina Turner

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

~ William Feather

'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

~ Jessye Norman

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

~ Dean Inge

He who devotes sixteen hours a day to hard study may become at sixty as wise as he thought himself at twenty.

~ Mary Wilson Little

Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.

~ Tobias Smollett

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

~ Sholom Aleichem

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

~ Samuel Johnson

I wasn't as used to the new dumb questions, so when men I had once thought of as wise daddies now asked me 'How do you write?' I did not try and spill red wine in their suede pants. I would just smile and say, 'On a typewriter in the mornings when there's nothing else to do.'

~ Eve Babitz

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

~ Benjamin Franklin

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

~ Plato

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

~ William Shakespeare

Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.

~ Harry Day

Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.

~ Sun Tzu

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Conservation means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men.

~ Gifford Pinchot

At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.

~ Alcuin

Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive.

~ Wilbur Wright

As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.

~ Demosthenes

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

~ George Santayana

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.

~ Apollonius Of Tyana

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.

~ Edward Everett Hale

The drive toward Life is protective, thoughtful, vulnerable, and invested in immaculate love. It is this last that marks the difference between a wise heart muddy with real life experiences in the trenches and a dry heart that functions on rote concepts alone.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

~ Oliver Goldsmith

The wise person often shuns society for fear of being bored.

~ Jean De La Bruyère

I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.

~ Sandra Day O'connor

I wish the government and the Minister of Justice would address these legal and constitutional arguments, but they refuse to. They want Canadians to go blindly into their brave new world, but it is not wise for a society to move blindly in any direction.

~ Stockwell Day

I believe that President Clinton considered the legal merits of the arguments for the pardon as he understood them, and he rendered his judgment, wise or unwise, on the merits.

~ John Podesta

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

~ Alexander Meiklejohn

When I was a boy, my own dad told me in a smiling and wistful way that it's a wise man that knows his own father.

~ Michael Leunig

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

~ Winston Churchill

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

~ Herbert Spencer