Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

‚Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Information is not knowledge.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Nature is not human hearted.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

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

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.