Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Wise

"When you love you are not wise: when you are wise you do not love." - Publius Syrus

"A fool's heart is in his tongue; but a wise man's tongue is in his heart." - Francis Quarles

"Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise." - Francis Quarles

"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." - Francis Quarles

"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." - Francis Quarles

"The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber. If virtue accompanies beauty it is the heart's paradise; if vice be associate with it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fools furnace." - Francis Quarles

"It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary." - Philippe Quinault

"True purity of taste is a quality of the mind; it is a feeling which can, with little difficulty, be acquired by the refinement of intelligence; whereas purity of manners is the result of wise habits, in which all the interests of the soul are mingled and in harmony with the progress of intelligence. That is why the harmony of good taste and of good manners is more common than the existence of taste without manners, or of manners without taste." - Pierre Louis Roederer

"A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the full value of time and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain." -

"The man who has never made a fool of himself in love will never be wise in love." - Theodor Reik

"Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skilled direct it." - Madame Roland, Jeanne Manon Philon, born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon

"When fate is adverse, a wise man can always strive for happiness and sail against the wind to attain it." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things." -

"Truly prosperity tries the souls even of the wise." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"I grew up among wise man and found that there is nothing better for man than silence. Knowledge is not the main thing, but deeds." - Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot or Pirqe Aboth) NULL

"Who is wise? The man who can learn something from every man. Who is strong? The man who overcomes his passion. Who is rich? The man who is content with his fate. Whom do men honor? The man who honors his fellow man." - Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot or Pirqe Aboth) NULL

"An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red light... The truly wise person is colorblind." - Albert Schweitzer

"He is a fool who cannot be angry; but he is a wise man who will not." -

"It was the saying of a great man that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man’s business." -

"No man ever became wise by chance." -

"No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master." -

"Only the wise man is content with what is his. All foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with itself." -

"It is wiser to be kind than to be wise." - Noah benShea

"For his entire life he was in the company of wise men and Of all the things beneficial to one’s body, silence is the best. [paraphrase]" - Shimon HaTzaddik

"A wise man knows his own ignorance; a fool thinks he knows everything." - Charles Simmons

"A good man and a wise man may, at times, be angry with the world, and at times grieved for it; but no man was ever discontented with the world if he did his duty in it." - Robert Southey

"The gates of wisdom and truth are forever closed to those who are wise in their own conceits; they have always opened before the expectancy of the humble and the teachable. The great need of the religious soul is the capacity to be receptive." -

"The ignorant man is not onlyh agitated by external causes in many ways, and never enjoys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it were, both of God an of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer ceases also to be. On the other hand, the wise man, in so far as he is considered as such, is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being concscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of soul." -

"A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

"A wise man should have money in his head, not in his heart." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

"The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former." - Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -

"A word to the wise is sufficient." -

"Vain man would trace the mystic maze with foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God, his balance hold, and guide his angry rod, new-mould the spheres, and mend the skies’ design, and sound th’ immense with his short scanty line. Do thou, my soul, the destined period wait, when God shall solve the dark decrees of fate, His now unequal dispensation clear, and make all wise and beautiful appear." - Thomas Tickell

"The wise man knows his wisdom is limited, but the fool thinks he knows everything." - Hotzoas Chochmah Umassar

"A wise man said, “Most people do not feel bad because they lack wisdom; they feel bad because people say they lack wisdom.”" - Hotzoas Chochmah Umassar

"Too many follow example rather than precept; but it is safer to learn rather from precept than example. Man a wise teacher does not follow his own teaching; for it is easier to say, do this, than to do it. If then I see good doctrine with an evil life, though I pity the last, I will follow the first. Good sayings belong to all; evil actions only to their authors." - Arthur Warwick

"When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is truly a wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on." - Richard Whately

"The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"A wise man will always be contented with his condition, and will live rather according to the precepts of virtue, than according to the customs of his country." - Antisthenes NULL

"The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise." - Apocrypha NULL

"He who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise." -

"The goal of our intellectual efforts cannot be a static, polished possession; it can only be further, more successful efforts of the same general kind. In science as in life it is the process, not the terminus, that should concern us - if we are wise." - Bruce A. Aune

"In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool." -

"Be wise enough to be silent." - Babylonian Talmud

"Silence is good for the wise; how much more for the foolish." - Babylonian Talmud

"Wise is he who learns from every man." - Babylonian Talmud