wisest quotes

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

- Charles Caleb Colton
  Lacon, vol.1, no.322.

   Yet when I approach 584 Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.

-John Milton
   Adam speaking of Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.8, l.546^50.

The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew.

-John Milton
Of Socrates. Paradise Regained, bk.4, l.293^4.

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind: Or ravished with the whistling of a name, See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame!

- Alexander Pope
  An Essay on Man, epistle 4, l.281^4.

Therearetwothingstoaimat inlife: first, toget what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it.Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

- Logan Pearsall Smith
Afterthoughts,'Life and Human Nature'.

Have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself,have they not had their Hobby- Horses†and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

- Laurence Sterne
^67  Tristram Shandy, bk.1, ch.7.