Wisdom

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Wit is educated insolence.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

As you cannot do what you want, want what you can do.

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

It is mere childishness to expect men to believe as their fathers did; that is, if they have any minds of their own. The world is a whole generation older and wiser than when the father was of his son’s age.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.

To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame

Il maestro di color che sanno.

All uncertainty is fruitful ... so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand.

A delicate wit is a corruption which a nation takes a long time to acquire. It is only worn-out nations that possess it.

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden as if in caves.

Maturity means reacquiring the seriousness one had as a child at play.

One can know the world without going outside. One can see the Way of Heaven without looking out the window.

Il meglio, è l’inimico del bene .

Where ignorance is bliss,

[ Socrates speaking :] Unless either philosophers become kings in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophical intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. Nor, until this happens, will this constitution which we have been expounding in theory ever be put into practice within the limits of possibility and see the light of the sun.

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, The green casque has outdone your elegance.

Very learned women are to be found, in thesame manner as female warriors; but they areseldom or never inventors.

Don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardnessand stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.