Wisdom Whispers: Enlightening Quotes from Across the Ages (Page 6)

"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!"

Robert Browning, Poet

"Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone"

Baltasar Gracian, Philosopher

"One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter"

Joseph Addison, Writer

"If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius"

Joseph Addison, Writer

"Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance"

Baltasar Gracian, Philosopher

"Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?"

Natalie Clifford Barney, Author

"The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words"

Robert South, Clergyman

"Speech was given to the ordinary sort or men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it"

Robert South, Clergyman

"A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense"

James Thurber, Comedian

"Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as "a wise Latina" trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism"

Camille Paglia, Author

"The wise does at once what the fool does at last"

Baltasar Gracian, Philosopher

"The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought"

William Ellery Channing, Writer

"Women are not so well united as to form an Insurrection. They are for the most part wise enough to love their Chains, and to discern how becomingly they fit"

Mary Astell, Writer

"Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more"

Agatha Christie, Writer

"No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude"

Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician

"The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love"

Paulo Coelho, Novelist

"I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had"

Margaret Mead, Scientist

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable"

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Writer

"The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

"The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

"No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and 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"

Hunter S. Thompson, Journalist

"The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn"

Alexander Smith, Poet

"Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse"

Bertolt Brecht, Poet

"The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind"

William Wordsworth, Poet

"Poverty makes you sad as well as wise"

Bertolt Brecht, Poet

"I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise"

Charles de Montesquieu, Philosopher

"The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat"

John Le Carre, Author

"Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne"

Pearl S. Buck, Novelist

"Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots"

Karl Kraus, Writer

"Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls forth faith rather than reason"

Hal Borland, Author