Wisdom

You've got to love what's loveable and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

Silence is all the genius a fool has.

Opera does not call so much for an imaginative ear as for an imaginative eye, an eye which can see beyond little absurdities toward great truths.

He should not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall. J. R. R.

 

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to^reak the bank of our answers.

An ignorance of means may minister To greatness, but an ignorance of aims Makes it impossible to be great at all.

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,

Le sens commun est fort rare .

A modest garden . . . contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

One would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

 

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form—that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility—can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

[ Socrates speaking :] Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?

Four be the things I am wiser to know:

Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. J. R.R.

 

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress.

People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.