Quotations : Proverbs and Folk Wisdom : Wisdom Quotes

It is never wise to try to appear to be more clever than you are. It is sometimes wise to appear slightly less so.

William Whitelaw (1918 - 1999)

British politician.

The Observer (London), "Sayings of the Year"

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.

Essays, "Of Ceremonies and Respects"

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious Animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.

Plautus (254? - 184 BC)

Roman comic playwright.

Truculentus

If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom.

Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)

British writer and journalist.

The Unquiet Grave

In youth and beauty wisdom is but rare!

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

English poet.
The Odyssey of Homer

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Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

William Cowper (1731 - 1800)

British poet.
The Task

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

English poet.
Epigram

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951)

Austrian philosopher.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

We are wiser than we know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

U.S. poet and essayist.

Essays, "The Over-Soul"

'Twere more than woman to be wise;
'Twere more than man to wish thee so!

Thomas Moore (1779 - 1852)

Irish poet.

Juvenile Poems, "The Ring"

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

Spanish-born U.S. philosopher, poet, and novelist.
Dialogues in Limbo

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

U.S. journalist, critic, and editor.

Prejudices, "Third Series"

The man who in himself can read,
That man, I say, is wise indeed.

Freidank (lived early 13th century)

German poet.

The highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole—the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)

Russian writer.

War and Peace

The fox knows many things—the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Attributed to Archilochus of Paros Archilochus (680? BC - 640? BC)

Greek poet.
 

A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge   (1772 - 1834)

British poet.

Lyrical Ballads, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

It is a point of wisdom to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.

Plutarch (46? - 120?)

Greek biographer and philosopher.
"Of the Training of Children"

Quotations : Proverbs and Folk Wisdom : Wisdom
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