Wise Quotes

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

Perfect reason flees all extremity, and leads one to be wise with sobriety.

When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.

The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Consider the birds. Be wise as serpents.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers?

How do you know antiquity was foolish? How do you know the present is wise? Who made it foolish? Who made it wise?

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.

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

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

The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.

The lips of the wise are as the doors of a cabinet; no sooner are they opened, but treasures are poured out before thee.

I clearly understood the concept of wise use before I ever heard the actual words, for my father wouldn't allow us to waste anything.

The Bible is proved to be a revelation from God, by the reasonableness and holiness of its precepts; all its commands, exhortations, and promises having the most direct tendency to make men wise, holy, and happy in themselves, and useful to one another.

A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.

No man was ever wise by chance.

He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.

'Tis folly to be wise.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.