Quotes About Wisdom

I keep six honest serving men. (They taught me all I know); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Thought flies and words go on foot.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Think much, speak little, and write less.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

Young folk, silly folk; old folk, cold folk.

Young men think old men fools and old men know young men to be so.

Oh, to be only half as wonderful as my child thought I was when he was small, and only half as stupid as my teenager now thinks I am.

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Reckless youth makes rueful age.

All the world's a mass of folly, Youth is gay, age melancholy: Youth is spending, age is thrifty, Mad at twenty, cold at fifty; Man is nought but folly's slave, From the cradle to the grave.

If youth but knew, and age were able, Then poverty would be a fable.

Ah sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age.

It was said by one hon. Gentleman last night that it was of no use crying over spilt milk, and certainly the observation was a just one so far as regarded the milk already spilt. But if by crying one could prevent other milk from being spilt in future, then the crying might be a very useful process.

...perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most.

Age 30 & the 30s. — Before thirty, men seek disease; after thirty, diseases seek men.

Age 35. — Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.

Age 39. — It's weird, when you're 39 it starts to happen...

Age 40. — I'm not 40, I'm eighteen with 22 years experience.

Age 40 & the 40s. — People often say to a boy when he eats between meals: "It will spoil your dinner." But, piecing between meals never spoils your meals until after you pass forty.

Age 45. — Thrice fifteen summers have their foliage cast...