Life & Wisdom Quote by Paul Engle

Engle slips a small blade into the big, pious word "wisdom" and twists. Instead of treating wisdom as a trophy you win through age or experience, he frames it as a kind of intelligent surrender: the capacity to recognize the limits of your clarity, your knowledge, even your moral certainty. It sounds paradoxical because it’s meant to puncture the familiar performance of being wise - the confident pronouncement, the tidy lesson, the polished takeaway. Real wisdom, he suggests, is often the refusal to deliver one.

For a poet, this is also a statement about craft. Poems aren’t court rulings; they’re instruments for holding ambiguity without rushing to resolve it. Engle’s line validates the moment when language fails, when the honest response is hesitation, silence, or a question. The subtext is anti-heroic: stop posing as the person with answers. Admit you’re in over your head. That admission isn’t weakness; it’s the ethical starting point.

Context matters here: Engle helped build the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a place where young writers arrive craving authority and leave (ideally) with sharper doubt. "Knowing when you can't be wise" reads like a workshop maxim disguised as philosophy: don’t force meaning, don’t counterfeit insight, don’t turn life’s mess into a slogan. In a culture that rewards certainty as charisma, Engle elevates restraint as intelligence - the rare skill of not mistaking confidence for truth.