Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

Surely wisdom will come as we listen to learn from children, parents, partners, neighbors, Church leaders, and the Lord.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

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.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

I’m crepuscular.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

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

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

He who hath many friends hath none.

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

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

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.

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

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

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.

We are wiser than we know.

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

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

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

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.