Quotes About Wisdom

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.

The great man is sparing in words but prodigal in deeds.

I think a Play the best divertisement that wise men have: but I do also think them nothing so who do discourse so formallie about the rules of it, as if 'twere the grand affair of humane life.

I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. . . . We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love.

An old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as the young man who is unable to embrace it.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

With parsimony a little is sufficient; without it nothing is sufficient; but frugality makes a poor man rich.

But the less a man knows about the past and the present the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.

A man can no more make a safe use of wealth without reason than he can of a horse without a bridle.

Man's experience in the world is to enable him to get out of its whirlpool.

The shaman is not merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself.

A man with a machine and inadequate culture is a pestilence.

The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.

It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.

God sends experience to paint men's portraits.

If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

The man who broods over the past can never master the difficulties of today. Every wise man learn to forget.

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

Smoke. Smoke. Smoke. Only a pipe distinguishes man from beast.

Nonsense! The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.