Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Change alone is unchanging.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

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

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

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

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

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.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

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

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

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

A lie cannot live.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

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

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

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?

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

We are wiser than we know.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

Philosophy is the highest music.

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

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

Error is always more busy than truth.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

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.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.