It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

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?

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

An egg today is better than a hen to-morrow.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

Education is the best provision for old age.

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

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

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

Knowledge is true opinion.

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

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

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

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.