“The true function of the priesthood, then, is above all one of knowledge and teaching, and this is why, as we said above, its proper attribute is wisdom.”

The Peasant of the Garonne (1968), pp. 147-148.

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest

Source: https://www.scribd.com/document/531451370/Quotes-of-Famous-People Scribd document, famous people quotes, Cornelius Keagon

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

The Great Indian Novel
Variant: A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

Source: 2666

No. 111.
The Guardian (1713)