“Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise.”
Le silence est l'esprit des sots
Et l'une des vertus du sage.
Bernard de Bonnard, "Le Silence," http://books.google.com/books?id=9gAvAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR14&dq=%22Et+l%27une+des+vertus+du+sage%22+Bonnard&ei=iyzvR-bFOIa4zASV0PyoBQ#PPA244,M1 L'Almanach des Muses (1776)
Misattributed
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Anatole France 122
French writer 1844–1924Related quotes
“By Silence, the discretion of a man is known: and a fool, keeping Silence, seemeth to be wise.”
The Sayings of the Wise (1555)
“A fool is known by his Speech; and a wise man by Silence.”
The Sayings of the Wise (1555)
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“We are all fools when one wise man appears.”
Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Touchstone, Act V, scene i
Misattributed
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Plutarch's Life of Cato
Variant: Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.
“The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.”
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus