Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ursula K. Le Guin

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.

Tycho Brahe

The mouse is wise, but the cat is wiser.

Twyla Tharp

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.

Tristan Bernard

To have grown wise and kind is real success.

Vita Sackville-West

The wise traveler is he who is perpetually surprised.

Walt Whitman

The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

Walt Whitman

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine ...

Saul Bellow

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.

Sarah Fielding

[F]or as Socrates says that a wise man is a citizen of the world, so I thought that a wise woman was equally at liberty to range through every station or degree of men, to fix her choice wherever she pleased.

Roger Ebert

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Roger Ebert

I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me.

Rod Serling

A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas, and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek, and a merry Christmas to each and all.

Robert Shapiro

Earth has provided a stable platform for the evolution of life over 4 billion years. But that lease is limited; we know for sure that it will expire after a few billion more. . . . If we are wise, we will have furnished our new apartments long before that time.

Sarah Vaughan

I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.

Zhuangzi

The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.

Zhuangzi

Heaven is in everything: follow the light, hide in the cloudiness and begin in what is. Do this and your understanding will be like not understanding and your wisdom will be like not being wise. By not being wise you will become wise later.

Zhuangzi

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, not because he wills to be quiet. . . . Joy does all things without concern. For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, and non-action are the root of all things.

Yves Montand

Answers make you wise, but questions make you human.

William Harvey

Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth.

William Hague

I don't think a wise thing at this moment is for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.

William Hazlitt

Religion either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set up false pretenses to both.

William Hazlitt

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

William Hazlitt

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

William Hazlitt

Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man.

William Hazlitt

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

William Hazlitt

Experience makes us wise.

William Hazlitt

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

William Hazlitt

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.

William Hazlitt

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

William Hazlitt

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.

William Davenant

Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd, Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave; For though we like it, as a forward child, 'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.

William Davenant

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.