Wisest Quotes - Page 3

• This is beyond understanding." said the king. "You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself?" And Merlin said quietly, "Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.

  John Steinbeck

  Wise, Kings, Winning

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.85, Penguin

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• We should look to (Castro) as one of the Earth's wisest people, one of the people we should consult.

  Oliver Stone

  People, Looks, Earth

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• Success to the strongest, who are always, at last, the wisest and best.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lasts, Strongest

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• The wisest man I ever knew taught me something I never forgot. And although I never forgot it, I never quite memorized it either. So what I’m left with is the memory of having learned something very wise that I can’t quite remember.

  George Carlin

  Wise, Wisdom, Memories

  George Carlin (1998). “Brain Droppings”, Hyperion

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• In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

  Joseph Addison

  Friends, Men, Thinking

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.293

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• The wisest among my race understand that agitations of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.

  Booker T. Washington

  Struggle, Race, Progress

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• If travel were so inspiring and informing a business ... then the wisest men in the world would be deck hands on tramp steamers.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Men, Wisest Man, Hands

  Sinclair Lewis (2002). “Arrowsmith: Elmer Gantry ; Dodsworth”

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• By seeing the beauty in every face we lift others into their wisest self and increase the chances of hearing a synchronistic message.

  James Redfield

  Spiritual, Self, Hearing

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• The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Simple, Should Have

  Erich Maria Remarque, Helmuth Kiesel, Joseph Roth (2004). “All quiet on the western front”, Continuum International Publishing Group

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• All are sure in their days except the most wise ... He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt.

  Michael Faraday

  Wise, Doubt, Philosopher

  Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.175, Cambridge University Press

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• Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Men, Views, Should Have

  "The Ten Books On Architecture". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, Book III, Preface, Sec. 1, c. 15 BC.

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• Pretence about anything sometimes deceives the wisest and shrewdest man, but, however cunningly it is hidden, a child of the meanest capacity feels it and is repelled by it.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Children, Men, Sometimes

  Leo Tolstoy (2012). “Anna Karenina”, p.241, Courier Corporation

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• To the wisest man, wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Wisest Man, Squares

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.302, CUP Archive

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• Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.

  Thomas Huxley

  Nature, Rain, Science

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1870). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.296, Adam, Stevenson

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• Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.

  Stefan Zweig

  Psychology, Understanding, Intellectual

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• Haste is productive of injury, and so is too much hesitation. He is the wisest man who does everything at the proper time.

  Ovid

  Men, Wisest Man, Too Much

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• It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Argument, Maxims

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• It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Discovery, Design

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.82

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• Judgment of the people is often wiser than the wisest men.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Men, Wisest Man, People

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• The wisest man is generally he who thinks himself the least so.

  Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Humility

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• Do not grieve. Misfortune will happen to the wisest and best of men. Death will come, always out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey. What is past and cannot be prevented should not be grieved for... Misfortunes do not flourish particularly in our lives - they grow everywhere.

  Kent Nerburn

  Death, Past, Men

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• Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.

  Christine de Pizan

  Men, Foolish Man, Opinion

  Christine De Pizan (1982). “The Book of the City of Ladies”, New York : Persea Books

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• In summoning even the wisest of physicians to our aid, it is probably that he is relying upon a scientific "truth", the error of which will become obvious in just a few years' time.

  Marcel Proust

  Health, Medicine, Errors

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• When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Love, Kings, Men

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• All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous "Know thyself" inscribed in the temple of Delphi.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Men, Errors, People

  Konrad Lorenz (2005). “On Aggression”, p.99, Routledge

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