Wisest Quotes - Page 11

• The seeming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest.

  William Shakespeare

  Cunning, Seeming

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 3, sc. 2, l. 97

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• My dear father; my dear friend; the best and wisest man I ever knew, who taught me many lessons and showed me many things as we went together along the country by-ways.

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Daughter, Fathers Day, Country

  Sarah Orne Jewett (2005). “The Country of the Pointed Firs: And Selected Short Fiction”, Barnes & Noble

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• Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.

  Henry Fielding

  Fashion, Men, Law

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1851). “The Works of Henry Fielding: Complete in One Volume”, p.664

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• Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven - of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

  Euripides

  Humility, Son, Men

  "The Bacchae". Play by Euripides, 405 BCE.

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• All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake, Because in us keen longings they awake.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Beauty, Beautiful, Sweet

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• Passion very often makes the wisest men fools, and very often too inspires the greatest fools with wit.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Men, Wisest Man

  "Moral Maxims and Reflections". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld, no. 7, 1665-1678.

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• For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven.

  John Armstrong

  Flames, Heaven, Earth

  John Armstrong (1770). “The forced marriage, a tragedy. Sketches: or, Essays on various subjects, by Launcelot Temple, Esq”

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• The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.

  Plato

  Men, Worthless

  Apology, 23b (translated by H Tredennick).

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• The gretteste clerkes been noght wisest men.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Men, Wisest Man

  'The Canterbury Tales' 'The Reeve's Tale' l. 4054

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• The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds that of a child. If a child were to conjecture how an army is to be formed in the day of battle--how a city is to be fortified, or a state governed--what chance has he to guess right? As little chance has the wisest man when he pretends to conjecture how the planets move in their courses, how the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds act upon our bodies.

  Thomas Reid

  Children, Moving, Army

  Thomas Reid, William Hamilton, Harry M. Bracken, Thomas Reid, Sir William Hamilton (1967). “Philosophical Works”, p.235, Georg Olms Verlag

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• Why do people argue? Even the wisest of men have not found God through argument! Is God a subject for argument?

  Sarada Devi

  Men, People, Arguing

  Sarada Devi (1963). “At Holy Mother's Feet: Teachings of Shri Sarada Devi”

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• The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.

  Jose Saramago

  Morning, Writing, Men

  "Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, winner of 1998 Nobel, dies". www.cnn.com. June 18, 2010.

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• For each of the four hundred and four bodily ailments celebrated physicians have produced infallible remedies, but the malady which brings the greatest distress to mankind - to even the wisest and cleverest of us - is the plague of poverty.

  Ihara Saikaku

  Physicians, Four, Poverty

  "The Japanese Family Storehouse" by Ihara Saikaku, (Book III, ch. 1), 1688.

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• Nobody, I believe, will deny, that we are to form our judgment of the true nature of the human mind, not from sloth and stupidity of the most degenerate and vilest of men, but from the sentiments and fervent desires of the best and wisest of the species.

  Robert B. Leighton

  Believe, Men, Stupidity

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• The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.

  Leo Strauss

  Men, Past, Play

  Leo Strauss (1995). “Liberalism Ancient and Modern”, p.8, University of Chicago Press

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• Generalissimo Stalin directed every move... made every decision... He is the greatest and wisest military genius who ever lived...

  Georgy Zhukov

  Military, Moving, Decision

  "Top GENERAL: ZHUKOV". "TIME" Magazine, February 21, 1955.

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• Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts,--the first and the wisest of beasts, it may be, but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree and not in kind,--just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts, and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of the soul within us that makes the difference.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  School, Elephants, Differences

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated)”, p.3103, Delphi Classics

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• The wisest fool in Christendom.

  King James I

  Fool, British History, Christendom

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• The wisest thing you'll ever do in this life is to draw close to God and to seek Him with all your heart.

  Bob Sorge

  Heart, Life Is, This Life

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• There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Plato, Greatness, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal Truths”, p.87

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• The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Cost, Littles, Virtue

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• We have all our playthings. Happy are they who are contented with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the least productive of ill consequences.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Shade, Hours, Ill

  Mary Wortley Montagu, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie Wharncliffe (1837). “The Letters and Works: In Three Volumes”, p.147

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• It was three o'clock in the morning – the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Life, Morning, Three

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2016). “THE BLUE CASTLE (Unabridged)”, p.48, e-artnow

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• No matter the barbs of fate that frustrate you, no matter how stacked against you the cards of fortune. . . . There is a liberating law in the universe, and you can become the highest of the high, wisest of the wise.

  Uell Stanley Andersen

  Wise, Fate, Law

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• The most beautiful ape is ugly when compared to a human. The wisest human will seem like an ape when compared to a god with respect to wisdom, beauty, and everything else.

  Heraclitus

  Beautiful, Wisdom, Respect

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