Life & Wisdom Quote by Francis Quarles

A neat little verbal knot: Quarles flips “worldly wise” into “wisely worldly” to expose how easily prudence curdles into cynicism. The line is a Puritan-era warning dressed up as a compliment. Yes, know the world. No, don’t let the world train you into its preferred kind of intelligence: the shrewd, self-protective, reputation-managing savvy that mistakes moral compromise for maturity.

The intent is practical, not dreamy. Quarles isn’t advocating retreat; he’s arguing for literacy in temptation. “Wisely worldly” means you can read the room, spot the hustle, navigate power, and anticipate human weakness without becoming fluent in the very vices you’ve learned to recognize. The subtext is an indictment of a certain posture: the person who treats faith and ethics as naive, who wears hardness like a credential. Quarles suggests that “worldly wisdom” is often just ego with better manners.

Context matters. Writing in early 17th-century England, Quarles lived amid religious conflict, courtly corruption, and a culture where survival often depended on patronage and performance. For a devotional poet, the court’s polish was suspect: a glamour machine that rewarded calculation and punished sincerity. The chiasmus-like reversal works because it mimics the moral choice it demands. You can’t avoid the world, but you can choose your orientation inside it. In a single balanced line, Quarles offers a strategy for living under pressure: keep your eyes open, keep your conscience sharper.