Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

Knowledge is true opinion.

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.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

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

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

Young love is wild and outrageous, laughing at moderation and blinding us to common sense.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

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.

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

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

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

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

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

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

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

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

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

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

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.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.