Wisdom

Happiness . . . is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability.

Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.

To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.

If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him.

Greatness is the secular name for Divinity: both mean simply what lies beyond us.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

I OWE MY SUCCESS TO HAVING LISTENED RESPECTFULLY… TO THE VERY BEST ADVICE… AND THEN GOING AWAY AND DOING THE EXACT OPPOSITE.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

WISDOM IS BETTER THAN WIT, AND IN THE LONG RUN WILL CERTAINLY HAVE THE LAUGH ON HER SIDE.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

THE AFTERNOON KNOWS WHAT THE MORNING NEVER SUSPECTED.

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I’m not certain what the difference is, but I do know that if you butt your head against a stone wall long enough, at some point you realize the wall is stone and that your head is flesh and blood.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.