Top 100 The Wise Man Quotes
#1. The wise man ... if he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear.
Samuel Smiles
#2. Heaven-born, the soul a heavenward course must hold; beyond the world she soars; the wise man, I affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes, nor will he lend his heart to ought that doth time depend
Michelangelo
#3. The wise man waits and his enemies tear each other to pieces
Lesley Downer
#4. The wise man neither rejects life nor fears death ... just as he does not necessarily choose the largest amount of food, but, rather, the pleasantest food, so he prefers not the longest time, but the most pleasant.
Epicurus
#5. The wise man, the true friend, the finished character, we seek everywhere, and only find in fragments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#6. Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken virtue and abate her edge
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
John Milton
#7. Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.
Robert A. Heinlein
#8. For it is written that if the wise man appears always stupid, his failures do not disappoint, and his success gives pleasant surprise.
Christopher Moore
#9. The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God.
Aleister Crowley
#10. May I consider the wise man rich, and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.
Socrates
#11. ...nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation.
Seneca.
#12. Remember that the wise man is compassionate and understanding with his mind, but not with his money.
Gennady Stolyarov II
#13. What whispers from the center of the soul is an innocence - so loving, so pure, so divine - that the sage bows and the wise man weeps at the sound of its soft singing.
Heather K. O'Hara
#14. Few things are necessary to make the wise man happy while no amount of material wealth would satisfy a fool. I am not a fool.
Og Mandino
#15. The wise man comes to God without saying a word and stands in awe of Him.
Francis Chan
#16. In Shakespeare's play As You Like It, Touchstone says to Audrey in the Forest of Arden "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." (Act V, Scene I).
Karolina Achirri
#17. Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or their ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable
Carl Jung
#18. Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself." -
Elizabeth Gilbert
#19. the wise man needs nothing and yet he can make good use of anything, whereas the fool 'needs' countless things but can make good use of none of them.
Donald J. Robertson
#20. The conqueror is regarded with awe; the wise man commands our respect; but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection.
William Dean Howells
#21. The wise man is he who constantly wonders afresh.
Andre Gide
#22. Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
Andrew Carnegie
#23. The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
#24. It's the wise man who stays home when he's drunk.
Euripides
#25. The wise man is he who is not surprised when he finds stale tea in a beautiful teapot!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#26. He who is surety is never sure himself. Take advice, and never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose. Remember the word of the wise man: He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it; and he that hateth suretyship is sure.
Charles Spurgeon
#27. That is the way things are weighed and disagreements settled - when standards are established. Philosophy aims to test and set such standards. And the wise man is advised to make use of their findings right way.
Epictetus
#28. Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself.
Horace
#29. Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task. - Epictetus
Karen Marie Moning
#31. Just as an arrow smith shapes an arrow to perfection with fire, so does the wise man shape his mind.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#32. Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.
Epicurus
#33. The wise man will follow a star, low and large and fierce in the heavens, but the nearer he comes to it the smaller and smaller it will grow,
till he finds it the humble lantern over some little inn or stable. Not till we know the high things shall we know how lowly they are.
G.K. Chesterton
#34. With the wise man, what he has does not cease to be enjoyable because some one else has something else. Envy, in fact, is one form of vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations
Bertrand Russell
#35. The wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains. The wise man moves, the kind man rests. The wise man is happy, the kind man is firm.
Confucius
#36. The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.
John B. S. Haldane
#38. Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.
Horace
#39. Therefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.
Seneca.
#40. If you expect the wise man to be as angry as the baseness of crimes requires, then he must not only be angry but go insane.
Seneca The Younger
#41. Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Mark Twain
#42. Chess teaches that actions have consequences and the wise man - or woman - will always look to the endgame ...
Tiffany Reisz
#43. The wise man's home is the universe.
Democritus
#44. I do not know who I am, said the wise man, and went his way of knowledge unto the end of days.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
#45. The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool, on the other hand, needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.
Seneca The Younger
#48. The wise man knows of all things, as far as possible, although he has no knowledge of each of them in detail
Aristotle.
#50. The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.
Seneca The Younger
#51. The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.
Dean Inge
#52. The wise man, by vigor, mindfulness, restraint, and self-control, creates for himself an island which no flood can submerge.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#54. The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
Herbert Spencer
#55. The best part of such noble liquor, No less than gold and jewelry, By preference dwells in night and gloom. The wise man searches tirelessly; 5200 To see by daylight, that's child's play, But where it's dark, there mysteries have their home.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#56. The wise man reveals more than words spoken.
Toba Beta
#58. The fool who traveled is better off than the wise man who stayed home.
Rashi
#59. A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]
John Charles Polanyi
#60. The wise man knows that every experience is to be viewed as a blessing.
Henry Miller
#61. When the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger.
Confucius
#62. Follow me, the wise man said, but he walked behind.
Leonard Cohen
#63. Few things are needful to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; - and this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#64. The disease of philosophy. - Philosophy is itself the disease for which it pretends to be the cure: the wise man does not pursue wisdom but lives his life, and therein precisely does his wisdom lie.
Bruce Lee
#65. The wind cannot shake a mountain. Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man.
Gautama Buddha
#66. the wise man never assumes anything, never regrets anything, is never wrong, never changes his mind.
Robert Harris
#67. The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.
Gore Vidal
#68. It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from 'the wise man's mouth' but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth.
J.M. Coetzee
#69. My proof convinces the ignorant, and the wise man's proof convinces me. But he whose reasoning falls between wisdom and ignorance, I neither can convince him, nor can he convince me.
Khalil Gibran
#71. The skilful employer of men will employ the wise man, the brave man, the covetous man, and the stupid man.
Du Mu
#72. To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#73. The only way to live is to forget that you're going to die. Death is unimportant. The fear of it should never influence a single action of the wise man.
W. Somerset Maugham
#74. O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.
Plato
#75. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
Bertrand Russell
#77. The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.
J. P. Morgan
#78. One of my professors in college used to say As the wise man said, Do or do not, there is no try, but the advice columns generally say the opposite. If someone promises to try, and you're happy with that, don't push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much.
Jael McHenry
#79. The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
Bertrand Russell
#80. The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.
Michel De Montaigne
#81. Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Otto Von Bismarck
#82. The whole Earth is at the hand of the wise man, since the fatherland of an elevated soul is the Universe.
Democritus
#83. Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.
Edward Rutherfurd
#84. The wise man, after learning something new, is afraid to learn anything more until he has put his first lesson into practice.
Laozi
#85. The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is Possible.
Gabriel Marcel
#86. De wijze heeft geen onwrikbare beginselen. Hij past zich aan anderen aan.
(Free translation into English: The wise man has no firm principles. He adapts to others.)
Lao-Tzu
#87. The wise man is wise in vain who cannot be wise to his own advantage.
[Lat., Nequicquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret.]
Quintus Ennius
#88. The wise man lives as long as he should, not just as long as he likes.
Seneca The Younger
#89. For he who knows does not speak, He who speaks does not know" (12) And "The Wise Man gives instruction Without the use of speech." (13)
Thomas Merton
#90. The wise man reads both books and life itself.
Lin Yutang
#91. The wise man does not grow old, but ripes.
Victor Hugo
#92. Greatness, thou gaudy torment of out souls,
The wise man's fetter, and the rage of fools.
Thomas Otway
#93. The wise man thinks of fame just enough to avoid being despised.
Epicurus
#94. The wise man doesn't poke a sleeping bear with a stick.
Stephen King
#95. The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention.
Franz Schubert
#96. The husbandman deals with land; physicians and trainers with the body; the wise man with his own Mind.
Epictetus
#97. Importance ! What is it, sir after all ? The respect of fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the contempt of the wise man. - Barnave.
Anonymous
#98. The wise man does not permit himself to set up even in his own mind any comparisons of his friends. His friendship is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by many qualities.
Charles Dudley Warner
#99. The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.
Aristotle.
