Being Wise Quotes - Page 10

• It is not possible to love and be wise.

  Josephine Tey

  Wise, Wisdom

  Josephine Tey (2012). “To Love and Be Wise”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Halt," said the elegant diplomat, "when you asked me to marry you, did you think we could just sneak off to a glade in the woods with a few close friends and get it done?" Halt hesitated. "Well, no...of course not." As a matter of fact, that was exactly what he had thought. A simple ceremony, a few friends, some food and drink and then he and Pauline would be a couple. But he felt that it might not be wise to admit that right now.

  John Flanagan

  Wise, Couple, Simple

  John Flanagan (2011). “Erak's Ransom (Ranger's Apprentice Book 7)”, p.13, Random House

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• To be wise is to be eternally curious.

  Frederick Buechner

  Wise, Curious

  FaceBook post by Frederick Buechner from Dec 13, 2013

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• You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Life, Wise, Looks

  Jonathan Tropper (2009). “This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel”, p.193, Penguin

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• It is never too late to be wise.

  Daniel Defoe

  Wise, Too Late, Never Too Late

  Daniel Defoe, Thomas Roscoe (1831). “The life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe”, p.188

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• You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.

  Harry Turtledove

  Wise, Clever, Doe

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• Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own: [I hate a sage who is not wise for himself]

  Euripides

  Wise, Hate, Educational

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• You don't have to learn to be wise. If you just flow you can be successful. Mother Nature will carry you.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Wise, Mother, Spiritual

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• Man can learn self-discipline without becoming ascetic; he can be wise without waiting to be old; he can be influential without waiting for status. Man can sharpen his ability to distinguish between matters of principle and matters of preference, but only if we have a wise interplay between time and truth, between minutes and morality.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Wise, Time, Learning

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• Turn on the prudent
  Ant, thy heedful eyes,
  Observe her labours,
  Sluggard, and be wise.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Eye, Laziness

  "The poems of Samuel Johnson".

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• To each his suff'rings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan,- The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'T is folly to be wise.

  Thomas Gray

  Happiness, Wise, Pain

  'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' (1747) l. 91

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• Bipartisanship on behalf of an imprudent policy can be folly, just as partisanship on behalf of a just cause can be wise. What is clear is that politics will not stop at the water's edge simply because presidents plead for it. American foreign policy will return to the tradition of Truman and Vandenberg only when the American public demands it.

  James M. Lindsay

  Wise, Water, President

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• Ask Anthony Hopkins how he makes his characters come to life and he just shrugs. I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be able to do it. As they say: Where ignorance is bliss it's folly to be wise.

  Larry Eisenberg

  Wise, Ignorance, Character

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• To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty

  Phyllis Bottome

  Wise, Strong, Ignorance

  Phyllis Bottome (1998). “The Mortal Storm”, p.72, Northwestern University Press

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• Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Learning, Eye

  'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1749) l. 157

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• As a man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are, so the sceptic, in a vain attempt to be wise beyond what is permitted to man, plunges into a darkness more deplorable, and a blindness more incurable than that of the common herd, whom he despises, and would fain instruct.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Men, Darkness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1837). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think”, p.97

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• Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

  Lorrie Moore

  Wise, Writing, Thinking

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• He whose wisdom cannot help him, gets no good from being wise.

  Quintus Ennius

  Wise, Helping

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• The Old Testament contains fabulous elements. The New Testament consists mostly of teaching, not of narrative at all: but where it is narrative, it is, in my opinion, historical. As to the fabulous element in the Old Testament, I very much doubt if you would be wise to chuck it out.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Teaching, Historical

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• Mark, how the ready hands of Death prepare: His bow is bent, and he hath notch'd his dart; He aims, he levels at thy slumb'ring heart: The wound is posting, O be wise, beware.

  Francis Quarles

  Death, Wise, Heart

  Francis Quarles, Christopher Harvey (1866). “Emblems, divine and moral; The school of the heart [really by C. Harvey] and Hieroglyphies of the life of man”, p.23

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• There is no man ... however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man -- so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise -- unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded.

  Marcel Proust

  Wise, Wisdom, Memories

  Marcel Proust (2015). “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time”, p.481, Yale University Press

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• Changi for me - of course it's easy to be wise after the event, and to discuss it cleverly after the event - was about as near as you can get to being dead and still be alive.

  James Clavell

  Wise, Events, Alive

  Interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio, 1986.

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• You become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Wise, Strong, Order

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• Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise--a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Friends, Wise, Surly

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval”, p.121

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• No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wise, Country, Men

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.149

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