ὅσῳ κράτιστον κτημάτων εὐβουλία. Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
—Sophocles
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Category Archives: Wisdom
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A wicked person listens to deceitful lips;
a liar pays attention to a destructive tongue.
—Proverbs 17:4
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A close mouth catches nae flees.
—Scottish Proverb
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You can’t hold two watermelons in one hand.
—Afghan Proverb
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Ubi explorari vera non possunt, falsa per metum augentur. When the truth cannot be clearly made out, what is false is increased through fear.
—Quintus Curtius Rufus
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Authorities said … best leave it … unsolved.
—Nigel Tufnel
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A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.
—C. S. Lewis
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Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
—Pearl S. Buck
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Старая штука смерть, а каждому внове. Death is an old thing, but it comes like new to everyone.
—Ivan Turgenev
Should There Be a Nobel Prize for Hubris?
A good line from Kevin Williamson: “People who are high achievers in one field mistakenly believe that they possess a kind of generalized cleverness applicable to other areas of endeavor — call it Krugman’s Fallacy.” (H/T, Jim Geraghty)
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Wisdom is a curse when wisdom does nothing for the man who has it.
—Sophocles
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The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at.
—Jesse Owens
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A crow will never be a falcon.
—Ukrainian Proverb
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It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
—Christopher Morley
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Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
—George Washington
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Words must be weighed, not counted.
—Polish Proverb
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Write legibly.
—Lewis Carroll
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Empty barrels mak maist din.
—Scots Proverb
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Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
—Robert Frost
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Get used to disappointment.
—Dread Pirate Roberts
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Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
—Francis Bacon
A Note to the Iconoclastic Rioters
Before you pull down another monument to someone you despise, consider this story from the Soviet Union—
A village was surprised to find they had some surplus funds, so a meeting was called to determine what to spend them on. One group wanted to build a statue of Stalin. The other wanted to build a foot bridge over the creek so the village children would not have to ford the stream coming and going to school. The debate was heated, and the vote was equally divided, but one of the village elders had not participated. He was asked to break the tie.
“Grandfather,” they asked, “what shall we do?”
He replied, “Let’s build the statue and let the pigeons speak for us.”
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На чужо́й карава́й рот не разева́й. Don’t open your mouth to eat other people’s bread.
—Russian Proverb
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Non è il mondan romore altro ch’un fiato
di vento, ch’or vien quinci e or vien quindi,
e muta nome perché muta lato.
Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.
—Dante Alighieri (tr., C. E. Norton)
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[A]s you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them— “ordinary things” is a better expression. That is the way the world is.
—Chaim Potok