Quotes About Wisdom

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

For decades, conventional wisdom in the United States held that it was only a matter of time before China would become more liberal, first economically and then politically. We could not have been more wrong - a miscalculation that stands as the greatest failure of U.S. foreign policy since the 1930s.

Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.

The more I see of the country, the less I feel I know about it. There is a saying that after five years in the north every man is an expert; after ten years, a novice.

A wise man once told me that only by leaving someone good can you meet someone better.

To a good man nothing that happens is evil.

Men become old, but they never become good.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.

If a man has common sense, he has all the sense there is.

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

My old man is a man of few words.

The wise man seeks death all his life, and for this reason death is not terrifying to him.

I'm just an old man and I smell bad, remember?

Old men ought to be explorers.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.

The Way is to man as rivers and lakes are to fish, the natural condition of life.

Men do not mirror themselves in running water - they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.