Wisdom

My gran’ther’s rule was safer ’n ’tis to crow: Don’t never prophesy—onless ye know.

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules, Knowledge never learned of schools.

I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, Of Caesar’s hand, and Plato’s brain, Of Lord Christ’s heart, and Shakespeare’s strain.

For to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty.

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused with ill.

Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl?

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life.

Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.

With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

But where’s the man who counsel can bestow, Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?

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.

Be wise today; ’tis madness to defer.

Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

All is best, though we oft doubt, What the unsearchable dispose Of highest Wisdom brings about.

Deep vers’d in books and shallow in himself.

The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew. 7

Socrates… Whom well inspir’d the oracle pronounc’d Wisest of men.