Top 100 It Is Wise To Quotes
#1. Well, yes, Dustpaw, launching an attack and knocking me back across the border is one option. But is it wise to take on a cat twice your size?
Erin Hunter
#2. It is but too common, of late, to condemn the acts of our predecessors and to pronounce them unjust, unwise, or unpatriotic from not adverting to the circumstances under which they acted. Thus, to judge is to do great injustice to the wise and patriotic men who preceded us.
John C. Calhoun
#3. Some immemorial imbecilities have been added deliberately, on the ground that it is just as interesting to note how foolish men have been as to note how wise they have been.
H.L. Mencken
#4. Every time a message seems to grab us, and we think, 'I just might try it,' we are at the nexus of choice and persuasion that is advertising.
Andrew Hacker
#5. I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.
Abraham Lincoln
#6. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.
Thomas Browne
#7. It is not our difficulties or our suffering alone that makes us wise. It is what we add to them
patience, perseverance, compassion, courage, love. From this combination, our priceless pearls of wisdom grow.
Barbara De Angelis
#8. Magic is the craft of shaping, the craft of the wise, exhilarating, dangerous - the ultimate adventure. The power of magic should not be underestimated. It works, often in ways that are unexpected and difficult to control.
Starhawk
#9. I was reaching for one of the handles when I heard Heidler's voice from behind me. 'It would not be wise to enter. It is a bad time to disturb the dead.
Micheal Rivers
#10. To the disgrace of men it is seen that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it happens.
Philip Sidney
#11. It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age - that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over.
Laurie Colwin
#12. It is not wise [for Chinese] to do things to artificially disrupt relations with the U.S.
Jiang Zemin
#13. The fool doth think he is wise, yet it is the wise man that knows himself to be the fool As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1
Stephen Fry
#14. Effort is one of those things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it.
Carol S. Dweck
#15. When you are in the company of lunatics, behave like a lunatic. When you are in the company of intelligentsias, speak with brilliance ... that is how a chameleon behaves, the territory changes it, and it adapts to the changes.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#16. And it is not enough in the world for a wise brain to be ridiculed, it must also be wounded & mistreated; a head that is a treasury of wisdom should not expect any crown other than one of thorns. What garland can human wisdom expect when it sees what divine wisdom received?
Juana Ines De La Cruz
#17. Folly pursues us at all periods of our lives. If someone seems wise it is only because his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#18. If the universe is so bad ... how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
C.S. Lewis
#19. Though a man be wise it is no shame for him to live and learn.
Sophocles
#20. If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.
Plato
#21. You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.
Paul Theroux
#22. The practice of thrift is not outdated. We must discipline ourselves to live within our incomes even if it means going without or making do. The wise person can distinguish ... between basic needs and extravagant wants. Some find budgeting extremely painful, but I promise you, it is never fatal.
Marvin J. Ashton
#23. One thing that is guaranteed not to work. Doing Nothing. A goldmine when you realise it. Don't be paralysed by analysis. Don't be paralysed by fear. The one thing that is guaranteed not to work. Doing nothing achieves nothing.
Tony Curl
#24. It is a queer thing. In a time of great need, when powerful leadership is demanded, the people - confused and excited - hear only the strident voices of the audacious, and refuse to listen to the voice of wisdom which, being wise, is temperate.
Lloyd C. Douglas
#25. They seek the edges, because it is the edges that ultimately lead us. A wise person does not fear the edges and fringes, but studies them. Indeed, he or she is often in them, working to make change happen.
Laurie Beth Jones
#26. Stupidy is easy, everyone can learn it... You just say to stupid stuff and you are the big Job,... but try to be a wise that's what's hard and most people just try to destroy the wise people why??
Because they are too stupid to realease it!
Deyth Banger
#27. By three things the wise person may be known. What three? He sees a shortcoming as it is. When he sees it, he tries to correct it. And when another acknowledges a shortcoming, the wise one forgives it as he should.
Gautama Buddha
#28. It is not wise, or even possible, to divorce private behavior from public leadership ... By its very nature, true leadership carries with it the burden of being an example.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#29. It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#30. The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.
Thomas Adams
#31. Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.
Thornton T. Munger
#32. Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.
Charles Spurgeon
#33. Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
E.B. White
#34. It's a wise man who understands that every day is a new beginning, because boy, how many mistakes do you make in a day? I don't know about you, but I make plenty. You can't turn the clock back, so you have to look ahead.
Mel Gibson
#35. Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
Charles Caleb Colton
#36. Here again is one grand element of a preacher's success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, To make easy things seem hard is every man's work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.
J.C. Ryle
#37. It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Aeschylus
#38. Believe nothing because it is written in books. Believe nothing because wise men say it is so. Believe nothing because it is religious doctrine. Believe it only because you yourself know it to be true.
Gautama Buddha
#39. It is demonstrable from Geology that there was a period when no organic beings had existence: these organic beings must therefore have had a beginning subsequently to this period; and where is that beginning to be found, but in the will and fiat of an intelligent and all-wise Creator?
William Buckland
#41. Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.
Federico Fellini
#42. We try to find something to fill our void. But it is only God who can fill the void.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#43. 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.
Blaise Pascal
#45. It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise
Barbara Kingsolver
#46. It is little the sign of a wise or good man, to suffer temperance to be transgressed in order to purchase the repute of a generous entertainer.
Francis Atterbury
#48. Another of Shantideva's wise sentences rang in Chongan's mind: "May those whose hell it is to hate and hurt be turned into lovers bringing flowers." Chongan imagined that the remains of Shantideva's holy ribs could transform Satan rather than vice versa.
Katerina Sestakova Novotna
#49. It is wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war.
Clara Barton
#50. Meat is not agreeable to the wise: it has a nauseating odor, it causes a bad reputation, it is food for the carnivorous; I say this, Mahamati, it is not to be eaten.
Gautama Buddha
#51. It is wise to avoid militants of all plumage, to trust only the fanatically unfanatic
Frederick Franck
#52. All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.
Walter Raleigh
#53. I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is.
Joan D. Vinge
#54. Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.
Thomas Malthus
#55. When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.
Diane Ravitch
#56. But God does use the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. It doesn't matter who we are really - just who He is. - Miz Opal
Martha Finley
#57. Personal finance is a means to an end - living a rich and fulfilling life. It is not hard. It is not complicated. I write this to share simple truths I've learned from some very wise people.
Rick Van Ness
#58. Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance.
Baltasar Gracian
#59. For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.
Tim Wise
#60. And, to be true, an enemy's lair is an enemy's lair, no matter how comfortable or fancy it might appear.
Steven J. Carroll
#61. It is sad, people what to control others. But they have not learned to know their soul.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#62. The affairs of this world are so shifting and depend on so many accidents, that it is hard to form any judgment concerning the future; nay, we see from experience that the forecasts even of the wise almost always turn out false.
Francesco Guicciardini
#63. The natural way of ensuring that the past continues to live in the present and to inform the future is to write it down.
Ian Jack
#64. Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.
A.A. Milne
#65. The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.
Henry Miller
#66. Men shouldn't fear or hate what they do not know but study it and share it instead. It is both an act of selfishness and cruelty to seek for the destruction of wisdom and the wise, but also to keep silent when witnessing it happening.
Daniel Marques
#67. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#68. Man pays deference to woman instinctively, involuntarily, not because she is beautiful or truthful or wise or foolish or proper, but because she is a woman, and he cannot help it. If she descends, he will lower to her level; if she rises, he will rise to her height.
Mary Abigail Dodge
#69. There are some disabling myths about what art is, how to do it, what is good art, and what art is for, that have gagged generations, depriving them of significant and natural means of expression. This is a terrible loss and an unnecessary one.
Peter London
#70. It is always wise, as it is also fair, to test a man by the standards of his own day, and not by those of another.
Odell Shepard
#71. For some she came in a dream. For others in words as clear as a bell: it is time, I am here. She may come in a whisper so loud she can deafen you or a shout so quiet you strain to hear. She may appear in the waves or the face of the moon, in a red goddess or a crow.
Lucy H. Pearce
#72. What is a gentleman? It is to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise; and possessed of all these qualities to exercise them in the most graceful manner.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#73. In my day, girls jumped when a Wise One said jump, and continued jumping until they were told to stop. As I am still alive, it is still my day. Need I make myself clearer? - Sorilea
Robert Jordan
#74. Pride has never been a virtue. There are some occasions on which it is wise to remain silent.
Jeffrey Archer
#75. It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education.
Fukuzawa Yukichi
#76. Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.
Michael Dirda
#77. A wise man governs his eyes, not because it is wrong to delight in beauty, but because otherwise his delight may suffer transmutation into something very different.
J. Budziszewski
#79. Results have nothing at all whatever to do with the private fun of being an author. There lies the answer to the problem which puzzles many wise people. Now it is plain why there are so many of us ... But the public fun of being an author is rather apt to wear thin ...
J. E. Buckrose
#80. It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass?
S.M. Stirling
#81. Wisdom is not mathematical, nor astronomical, nor zoological; when it talks too much of any one thing it ceases to be itself. There are wise physicists, but wisdom is not physical; there are wise physicians, but wisdom is not medical.
George Sarton
#82. Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.
Saint Augustine
#83. Chastisement is designed for our good, to promote our highest interests. Look beyond the rod to the All-wise hand that wields it!
Arthur W. Pink
#84. It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
Archibald Alexander Hodge
#85. The quintessential feminine Self stands at the center of the psyche and it is wild, meaning natural and free, and utterly wise. It is not 'something' we must strive to create. This Self is already fully present, burning strong and waiting for us to come into its presence.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
#86. A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.
Vera Nazarian
#87. Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise.
Stendhal
#88. It seems to me that smart people seem to know things and wise people know how to use what they know. Smart is a big help to a man; wise is a big help to lots of men.
Dan Groat
#89. WILL'S RULES FOR LIVING #10: WHEN VISITING A FOREIGN LAND, IT IS ALWAYS WISE TO OBSERVE AND ABIDE BY THE CUSTOMS OF THE LOCAL CULTURE. UNLESS THEY'RE TRYING TO EAT YOU.
Mark Frost
#90. It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.
Laurence J. Peter
#91. If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
John Lancaster Spalding
#92. It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it.
George Henry Lewes
#93. It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.
Henry Fielding
#94. The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for the deliverance from fear. It is the storm within that endangers him, not the storm without.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#95. The road, lyric-wise, is a trap, and a bore. Maybe it's interesting to me, but I don't think it's a connecting thing with other humans. What is there to write about? Truck stops, hotels, clubs?
Dean Wareham
#96. From the practice of wise men. - To become wise, one must wish to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a wise guy has been swallowed. 301
Friedrich Nietzsche
#98. It is the honey which makes us cruel enough to ignore the death of a bee
Munia Khan
#99. The message of the season is not, "Let it snow" or even, "Let us shop." The real message of Christmas is, "Let us worship." That is what the wise men came to do. And that is what we should be doing as well.
Greg Laurie
