The only real valuable thing is intuition.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

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

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

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.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

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

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

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

Philosophy is the highest music.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

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.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

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

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!