Quotes on Wise

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?

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you If you do not act on upon them?

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.

Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.

If you foolishly ignore beauty, then you will soon find yourself without it.

The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.

Your choice of people to associate with, both personally and business-wise, is one of the most important choices you make. If you associate with turkeys, you will never fly with the eagles.

Though through all his life a fool associates with a wise man, he yet understands not the Dharma, as the spoon, the flavor of soup.

No man was ever wise by chance.

The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.

Cynicism cripples our imagination and limits our ability to see faint possibilities amidst glaring problems.

Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

For since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.

From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.