Browse 5655 quotes about Wise.
“Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.”
Source: Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys & A Sequel - Jo's Boys and How They Turned Out (Children’s Classics Series – Illustrated Edition)
“Had I succeeded well, I had been reckoned amongst the wise; our minds are so disposed to judge from the event.”
“A wise man in his house should find a wife gentle and courteous, or no wife at all.”
Source: Euripides
“The Navy is very old and very wise.”
Source: The Warfare Collection – Complete Historiographical Military Works of Rudyard Kipling: Sea Warfare, The Irish Guards in the Great War, A Fleet in Being, America’s Defenceless Coasts and many more: Including the Autobiography of the Author, France at War, The War in the Mountains, The Graves of the Fallen, The New Army in Training
“These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even to speak of himself or his own merits.”
“All's well that ends well.”
Source: The proverbs and epigrams of John Heywood: with an app. of variations
“It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.”
Source: Imaginary conversations of Greeks and Romans
“Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen: Richard I and the Abbot of Boxley. The Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. King Henry IV and Sir Arnold Savage. Southey and Porson. Oliver Cromwel and Walter Noble. Aeschines and Phocion. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil. King James I and Isaac Casaubon. Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. General Kleber and some French officers. Bonaparte and the president of the senate. Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle. Peter Leopold and the President Du
“A wise man will always be a Christian, because the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“Though a man be wise it is no shame for him to live and learn.”
Source: Dramas of Sophocles
“There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.”
Source: On the Constitution of the Church and State According to the Idea of Each
“what is popular need not necessarily be right or wise.”
Source: Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi: The years of challenge, January 1966-August 1969
“Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.”
“How to Be an American Housewife is filled with dreams and love-the kinds that come true and those that don't. Margaret Dilloway is wise and ironic. She has created wonderful characters who never, in spite of hardships, stop finding ways to love each other.”
“The Earth turns to Gold, in the hands of the wise.”
Source: The Spiritual Poems of Rumi
“If thy desire to raise thy fortunes encourage thy delights to the casts of fortune, be wise betimes, lest thou repent too late; what thou gettest, thou gainest by abused providence; what thou losest, thou losest by abused patience; what thou winnest is prodigally spent; what thou losest is prodigally lost; it is an evil trade that prodigally drives; and a bad voyage where the pilot is blind.”
Source: Enchiridon: containing institutions divine, moral
“Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace.”
Source: Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
“Hath fortune dealt thee ill cards? let wisdom make thee a good gamester. In a fair gale, every fool may sail, but wise behavior in a storm commends the wisdom of a pilot; to bear adversity with an equal mind is both the sign and glory of a brave spirit.”
“If thou seest anything in thyself which may make thee proud, look a little further and thou shalt find enough to humble thee; if thou be wise, view the peacock's feathers with his feet, and weigh thy best parts with thy imperfections.”
Source: Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
“If thou desire to be held wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue.”
Source: Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
“The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.”
“Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.”
Source: .) (1853).
“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.”
Source: The works and correspondence of...Edmund Burke
“Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.”
“The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.”
Source: Works: 1st American from the Last London Ed
“It is a wise child that knows his own father.
[Lat., Nondum enim quisquam suum parentem ipse cognosvit.]”
“But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you're an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.”
“Youth might be wise; we suffer less from pains than pleasures.”
Source: Festus: a poem
“To please the many is to displease the wise.”
Source: Plutarch's Morals
“The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater.”
Source: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography
“Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.”
“Writers on the subject of August Strindberg have hitherto omitted to mention that he could not write. ... Strindberg, who was neither a good nor a wise man, had a stroke of luck. He went mad. He lost the power of inhibition. Everything down to the pettiest suspicion that the dog had been given the leanest mutton chop, poured out of his lips. Men of his weakness and sensuality are usually, from their sheer brutishness, unable to express themselves. But Strindberg was mad and articulate. That is what makes him immortal.”
“A story should, to please, at least seem true,
Be apropos, well told, concise, and new:
And whenso'er it deviates from these rules,
The wise will sleep, and leave applause to fools.”
“The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.”
Source: The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920
“A poet's soul must contain the perfect shape of all things good, wise and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure, his thoughts high, his studies intense.”
Source: Collected essays
“The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.”
Source: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived.”
Source: American Fairy Tales: American Literature
“In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.”
Source: Logic: Or, The Right Use of Reason, in the Inquiry After Truth
“A wise woman will always let her husband have her way.”
“Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? And is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?”
Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
“It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time.”
Source: The Practical Works of Richard Baxter; with a Preface, Giving Some Account of the Author, and of this Edition of His Practical Works; an Essay on His Genius, Works, and Times ...
“The friends of gold will have to be extremely wise and moderate if they are to avoid a revolution.”
Source: A Treatise on Money
“Be still, then, thou uneasy mortal; know that God is unerringly wise; and be assured that, amidst the greatest multiplicity of beings, He does not overlook thee.”
Source: Meditations and contemplations: to which is prefixed the life of the author
“Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.”
“Revolution is man's normal activity, and if he is wise he will grade it slowly so that it may be almost imperceptible - otherwise it will jerk in fits and starts and cause discomfort.”
Source: the zodiac arch
“Satire, whilst envy and ill-humor sway
The mind of man, must always make her way;
Nor to a bosom, with discretion fraught,
Is all her malice worth a single thought.
The wise have not the will, nor fools the power,
To stop her headstrong course; within the hour
Left to herself, she dies; opposing strife
Gives her fresh vigor, and prolongs her life.”
“Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.”
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know... that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves... the same as all Gods have done before you.”
“The wind in a man's face makes him wise.”
Source: A Hand-book of Proverbs: Comprising an Entire Republication of Ray's Collection of English Proverbs, with His Additions from Foreign Languages : and an Alphabetical Index, in which are Introduced Large Additions, as Well of Proverbs as of Sayings, Sentences, Maxims, and Phrases
“Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise and profitable improvement of his social feelings.”
Source: Select sermons: delivered on various occasions from important passages of Scripture