The collection / 8,152 fragments

Wisdom.

Explore passages mentioning wisdom, wise. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

SearchTypeEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

8,152 results · Page 6 of 340Play this collection ▷

01Undated

A god could hardly love and be wise.

Publius Syrus / maxim

↗

02Undated

A wise man never refuses anything to necessity.

Publius Syrus / maxim

↗

03Undated

He bids fair to grow wise who has discovered that he is not so.

Publius Syrus / maxim

↗

04Undated

He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.

Publius Syrus / maxim

↗

05Undated

By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phædrus / quote

↗

06c. 80 AD

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian / quote

↗

07c. 83 AD

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch / quote

↗

08c. 83 AD

'T is a wise saying, Drive on your own track.

Plutarch / quote

↗

09c. 83 AD

It is a point of wisdom to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.

Plutarch / quote

↗

10c. 83 AD

Euripides was wont to say, "Silence is an answer to a wise man."

Plutarch / quote

↗

11c. 83 AD

When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets."

Plutarch / quote

↗

12c. 83 AD

For many, as Cranton tells us, and those very wise men, not now but long ago, have deplored the condition of human nature, esteeming life a punishment, and to be born a man the highest pitch of calamity; this, Aristotle tells us, Silenus declared when he was brought captive to Midas.

Plutarch / quote

↗

13c. 83 AD

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.

Plutarch / quote

↗

14c. 60 AD

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

Epictetus / quote

↗

15c. 150 AD

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus / quote

↗

16c. 200 AD

Aristippus said that a wise man's country was the world.

Diogenes Laertius / quote

↗

17c. 200 AD

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

Diogenes Laertius / quote

↗

18c. 1562 AD

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

Michael De Montaigne / quote

↗

19c. 1562 AD

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

Michael De Montaigne / quote

↗

20c. 1581 AD

It is the part of a wise man to keep himself to-day for to-morrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

↗

21c. 1581 AD

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

Meaning: A benefit you already possess may be worth more than a larger benefit you only hope to obtain. Weigh a secure result against the chance of losing it.

↗

22c. 1581 AD

Time ripens all things. No man is born wise.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

↗

23c. 1581 AD

Good wits jump; a word to the wise is enough.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

↗

24c. 1581 AD

Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.

Miguel De Cervantes / quote

↗