Wisdom Quotes

He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water-pot.

Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offenses, and they cannot hurt your feelings.

Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occassion of folly.

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools. Wise people create opportunities for themselves and make everything possible.

There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind.

I start out by believing the worst.

The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense; he is always satisfied with himself.

Six hours sleep for a man, seven for a woman and eight for a fool.

The stupid speak of the past, the wise of the present, and fools of the future.

It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity, that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds.

Never depend on the multitude, full of instability and whims; always take precautions against it.

The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means.

There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.

Better to have a known enemy than a forced ally.

The effect of discussions, making a show of talent, and calling councils of war will be what the effect of these things has been in every age: they will end in the adoption of the most pusillanimous or (if the expression be preferred) the most prudent measures, which in war are almost uniformly the worst that can be adopted.True wisdom, so far as a general is concerned, consists in energetic determination.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.