Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

Look, the American people are smart.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‚O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.‘ And God granted it.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

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.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Wit is educated insolence.

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

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

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world – a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

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

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

I’ll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

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

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

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.