Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

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

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

A creep is someone who claims he’s one thing but he’s actually another.

Knowledge is power.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

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

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

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.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

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.

Knowledge is true opinion.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

I have nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

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

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

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

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

The less you know, the more you believe.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Every time I plant a seed, He say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Who is the wise man? He who sees what’s going to be born.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

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.

It’s not a slam at you when people are rude, it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.

Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

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.

Change alone is unchanging.