Wise Quotes

Call a man 'ignorant,' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.

~ P. J. O'rourke

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance.

~ Baltasar Gracián

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

~ Voltaire

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

~ Alphonse De Lamartine

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

~ Benjamin Disraeli

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.

~ Isaac D'israeli

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

~ John Le Carré

When the world lacks muscular and wise American leadership, it devolves into total chaos, which, in turn, produces unspeakable evils.

~ Monica Crowley

Without any formal personal finance education or trustworthy resources to tell them otherwise, the majority of people in the 18-to-24-year-old age bracket do not know how to use credit effectively, tackle debt or make wise decisions when it comes to spending.

~ Alexa Von Tobel

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The foolish man conceives the idea of 'self.' The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of 'self;' thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

~ Buddha

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

~ Blaise Pascal

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is a wise man who knows where courage ends and stupidity begins.

~ Jerome Cady

A wise woman knows how to summon her courage and do what is right, rather than what is easy.

~ Suze Orman

A wise woman recognizes when her life is out of balance and summons the courage to act to correct it, she knows the meaning of true generosity, happiness is the reward for a life lived in harmony, with a courage and grace.

~ Suze Orman

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

~ Benjamin Franklin

I have not been that wise. Health I have taken for granted. Love I have demanded, perhaps too much and too often. As for money, I have only realized its true worth when I didn't have it.

~ Hedy Lamarr

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

~ Hippocrates

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

~ William Hazlitt

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

~ William Hazlitt

Travel makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

~ Thomas Fuller

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

~ F. H. Bradley

Senator Tester is wise enough to make sure his voice is heard in a positive manner to get things done.

~ Ryan Zinke

Everybody gets typecast in movies, but you have to make wise choices. I'd say around 90 percent of movie casting is about the way you look, so you have to fight that. If producers had their way, I'd only be in action films, but I'm interested in a more varied career than that.

~ Famke Janssen

The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism.

~ Todd Gitlin

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason.

~ Hal Borland

In design as in life, smart can also mean wise, kind, inspiring - and cost-effective. And that has a charm all its own.

~ Nancy Gibbs

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.

~ William Penn

I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you're younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That's what people do. And you can't really fix anything. It shouldn't be a massive difficult thing every day. Life's difficult enough.

~ Albert Brooks

People can do all kinds of things that maybe aren't wise in hindsight because of jealousy.

~ Kristin Bauer Van Straten

Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.

~ George Jean Nathan

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

~ Emma Watson

A word to the wise is infuriating.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

~ H. L. Mencken

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

~ William James