Top 100 Wise Old Quotes
#1. Morgause laughed as she mounted her horse with some help from a footman. "I see through your protests, Merlin. You are quite amorous of me, I know it." Merlin looked like he swallowed a frog. "Lady," he said. "Wise, old lady. Please depart lest I be forced to help you depart.
K.M. Shea
#2. A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."
Sydney J. Harris
#3. Our lady the Common Law is a very wise old lady though she still has something to learn in telling what she knows.
Frederick Pollock
#4. You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, Don't feed them. If you feed them, they'll never leave.
Dylan Brody
#5. A very wise old teacher once said: I consider a day's teaching wasted if we do not all have one hearty laugh.
Gilbert Highet
#6. A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.
Flann O'Brien
#7. This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, 'What the fuck is water?' and swim away.
David Foster Wallace
#8. This author has nothing but imagination ... there are people who claim that imagination has clearer and keener eyes than a wise, old mind.
Translated from: Und Friede auf Erden, (1904) (And Peace on Earth)
Karl May
#9. A wise old man taught me that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. Persuasion, not force, works best and lasts longest.
Robin Hobb
#10. A wise old owl sat on an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; The less he spoke the more he heard; Why aren't we like that wise old bird?
Edward Richards
#11. I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#12. A wise old owl once told me,
One time when he was out of his tree,
That nothing in this world is for free.
I agree!
P.D. Cain
#13. There is not a better day in the world to be spent than with a lot of wise old cowmen around barbecued beef, black coffee and good free holy beans.
Will Rogers
#14. But if you have so much fun, then why don't you get together more than once a month?'
She looked at me like a wise old owl and winked. 'Do something too often and it stops being special.
Beth Hoffman
#15. Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind.
J.K. Rowling
#16. I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man's puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.
Robertson Davies
#17. There was a wise old owl who sat in a tree
The less he spoke the more he heard
The more he heard the less he spoke
Why can't we be like that wise old owl in the tree?
Speech must die to serve that which is spoken.
Paul Ricoeur
#18. When I wrote 'Runaways,' I was a naive kid who thought that all parents were evil. Now that I'm a wise old man with children of my own, I am certain that all parents are evil.
Brian K. Vaughan
#19. I want to end up like Judi Dench. I want to have nice consistent work, doing lovely things, no matter how big or small they might be. I'd like to turn into a wise old thing.
Kate Winslet
#20. Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man.
Robertson Davies
#21. Respect and humility go together. Humility is not meekness, but the opposite of arrogance. A wise old Indian man once said, "Empty drums make the loudest noise." Grandfather often repeated this phrase to indicate that those with the least understanding are the most arrogant.
Arun Gandhi
#22. A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke, the more he heard, Why aren't we all like that old bird?
Daniel Yergin
#23. There is nothing more beautiful in this world than a healthy, wise old man.
Lin Yutang
#24. Whenever you get an appetite, you feed yourself. Therefore, fill your belly on wisdom of things old and new. Only swallow the truth, less you choke on the lies.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
#26. A man can be old and a fool
many are
a man can be young and wise
few are
Charles Bukowski
#27. when a culture needs wise spiritual guidance the most, all it gets from religious leaders is anxious condemnation and critique, along with a big dose of nostalgia for the lost golden age of the good old days. We
Brian McLaren
#28. I am old enough to enjoy a bit of nostalgia, but wise enough to know that there haven't been any "good ol' days" since Eden (the garden, not the prime minister).
Ron Brackin
#30. The land of fairy, where nobody gets old and godly and grave, where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue
W.B.Yeats
#32. The wise man knoweth where to stop, as he runneth in the race of fortune, For experience of old hath taught him, that happiness lingered midway; And many in hot pursuit have hasted to the goal of wealth, But have lost, as they ran, those apples of gold
the mind and the power to enjoy it.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
#33. It's just a logical guess that they are very very wise to put someone from the old series in it, and if you had to choose, it would be a very difficult decision.
Andreas Katsulas
#34. No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.
Gregory Maguire
#36. A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.
Meat Loaf
#37. Every past used to be a future once upon a time
Munia Khan
#38. A wise man of Old Earth had once claimed that science would destroy mankind, not through its weapons of mass destruction, but through finally proving that there was no god.
Graham McNeill
#39. This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in its inhabitants]; ... it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere that that.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#40. The young, in their innocence, are often wise and capable of teaching the old.
Christopher Vogler
#41. I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.
Philip Pullman
#42. I am old, yet I look at wise men and see that I am very young. I look over those stars yonder, and into the myriads of the aspirant and ordered souls, and see I am a stranger and a youth and have yet my spurs to win. Too ridiculous are these airs of age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#44. we can become not just old but wise.
Anonymous
#45. There is no such thing as the old age of the wise.
Sophocles
#46. The Canarsie People said the knowing belongs to the old and wise, but the unfolding is in the keeping of the young. The old prevent the young from straying off the path of wisdom. The young yearn after the path of dreams. Between the two there is truth.
Beverly Swerling
#47. You see yourself as if old and wise.
I see you really miss your childhood.
Toba Beta
#48. In any case, the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still at school.
Hermann Hesse
#49. But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.
Black Elk
#50. A wise, joyous bookit unfolds the knowledge and the beauty of the two lives it embraces-old wisdom and young discover, intertwining like vines.
Rex Reed
#51. Old soul cries through the tears of a newborn
Munia Khan
#52. Merlin, do you mind?' It was the King who asked me, a man as old and wise as myself; a man who could see past his own crowding problems, and guess what it might men to me, to walk in dead air where once the world had been a god-filled garden.
Mary Stewart
#53. What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age. - CARL JUNG No wise person ever wanted to be younger. - NATIVE AMERICAN APHORISM
Richard Rohr
#55. When I was young and bold and strong,
The right was right, the wrong was wrong.
With plume on high and flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
But now I'm old - and good and bad,
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say the world is so,
And wise is s/he who lets it go.
Dorothy Parker
#56. Cardinal: You are a wise man. You will lead us well.
Mortati: I am an old man. I would lead you briefly.
Dan Brown
#57. I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.
Glenda Jackson
#58. Treasure the wisdom of old age.
Learn from elder people and be wise.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#59. Write on your doors the saying wise and old,
"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere
"Be bold;
Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess
Than the defect; better the more than less;
Better like Hector in the field to die,
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#60. If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn't do anything to you, but since you aren't wise, you need us who are old.
Martin Luther
#61. Amidst the rush and confusion of modern life something old and wise is trying to catch up with us. Whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom tends to make meaningful unity possible.
Michael Meade
#62. It is not wise to give something old and powerful something they care about. And I am very old.
Patricia Briggs
#64. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet.
Mervyn Peake
#65. A wise witch knows the shadows come from the light.
Dacha Avelin
#66. I shall conclude with a saying of Alponsus, surnamed the Wise, King of Aragon - that among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read!
William Temple
#67. A witch is wise. She has earned her wisdom. She has learned to love her shadows and has grown more beautiful because of it. She has proven she can stand comfortably within her powers. She has become the true embodiment of a witch.
Dacha Avelin
#68. "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#69. Holy Father, forgive me for grumbling. I know I've sounded just like the Israelites. I long to dwell not on the If Onlys but on You. Make me wise like the old woodcutter - content with what I know, not perturbed by what I don't know.
Linda Dillow
#70. By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere.
Billy Crystal
#71. And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.
Naomi Novik
#72. I didn't know how I felt, except confused and bewildered, and very, very young. And the world all about us was wise, and old, so old.
V.C. Andrews
#73. Oft it may be chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were heedful for the wise to know.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#74. I've learned things from the sheep, and I've learned things from crystal, he thought. I can learn something from the desert, too. It seems old and wise
Anonymous
#75. The wise men posit questions to which they may not always find immediate answers, but through their reflections God stimulates man in his search for truth - which in the last analysis is a search for God himself.
University Of Navarra
#76. It was the kind of building that remembered things, deep-down things, things that rode tears into the world, telling them back to anyone old enough or wise enough to know how to listen with their eyes.
Charles M. Blow
#77. It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?
A. J. Jacobs
#78. You know, back in the old days adults were respected because of how wise they were, and people went to them to help settle disputes. Nowadays it's a whole different world, and half the time I wonder if grown-ups should really be in charge.
Jeff Kinney
#79. The human race is just getting started ... The cerebral cortex is only a hundred thousand years old. It's still a baby, sucking teat and eating Cheerios. We might get better, maybe even wise, if we can last another thousand years.
Ellen Gilchrist
#80. Be wise in time. What youth sows, old age must reap....Sow to yourself rather in righteousness: break up your fallow ground, sow not among thorns.
J.C. Ryle
#81. Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the Gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise.
Sophocles
#82. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.
Peter Kreeft
#83. In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.
Michael Crichton
#84. Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.]
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#85. In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: 'This too will pass.'
Benjamin Graham
#86. I'm growing fonder of my staff;
I'm growing dimmer in my eyes;
I'm growing fainter in my laugh;
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
I'm growing careless of my dress;
I'm growing frugal of my gold;
I'm growing wise; I'm growing
yes,
I'm growing old.
John Godfrey Saxe
#87. Ghurman was a wise Jinni who was more than three hundred years old, and had a long history with Humans.
Ibraheem Abbas
#88. Sotomayor's vainglorious lecture bromide about herself as 'a wise Latina' trumping white men is a vulgar embarrassment - a vestige of the bad old days of male-bashing feminism.
Camille Paglia
#89. He was old and wise, which meant tired and disappointed ...
T.E. Lawrence
#90. My view on politics is much more grassroots oriented; it's not old boy network oriented, so I tend to, you know, come at it a little bit stronger, a little bit more street-wise, if you will. That's rubbed some feathers the wrong way.
Michael Steele
#91. A wise man knows; learn from others, never get complacent and know where the classic old dangers come from.
Bear Grylls
#92. the people grew tired of this little gossip. Fathers looked at their children and thought: "They are not learning much. What will make them brave and wise? What will teach them to love their country and old Norway? Will not the stories of battles, of brave deeds, of mighty men, do this?
Jennie Hall
#93. Wise as she was, she realized that people can postpone their rebellious phases until they're eighty-five years old, and she decided to keep an eye on herself.
Tove Jansson
#94. Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.
Herman Melville
#95. I used to write on a big old couch, but I gave that away. I was wise enough to give it to my son, so if it turns out that the couch was essential to my work, at least the decision to be rid of it is not irreversible.
Marilynne Robinson
#96. My first competition, I guess, singing-wise, I was six years old, and there's a video of it, too. I'm just, like, stick straight. I'm not moving at all, and I'm just singing.
Tori Kelly
#98. Do not speak harshly to a grown-up man. He is old enough to be your father.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#99. Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#100. Appeal with respect to elderly people as you would to the members of your own family.
Lailah Gifty Akita
