“The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart.”
"Self-Poise" p. 130.
Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844)
Context: The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through all, if not by every one.
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Margaret Fuller 116
American feminist, poet, author, and activist 1810–1850Related quotes

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

“Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.”
XXVIII. PRUDENCE
Orphic Sayings

The Fireside, stanza 11, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "The incense of the heart may rise", Pierpont, Every Place a Temple, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The guru is nothing but pure consciousness, Bliss and eternal wisdom.”
In Kenopanishad http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Xp3UWxnha7EC&pg=PA56, p. 56
"Partisan Review 'Art Chronicle': 1952" (1952), p. 146
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Poem: Things that never die, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Bande Mataram, 16 April 1907
India's Rebirth
Context: There are periods in the history of the world when the unseen Power that guides its destinies seems to be filled with a consuming passion for change and a strong impatience of the old. The Great Mother, the Adya Shakti, has resolved to take the nations into Her hand and shape them anew. These are periods of rapid destruction and energetic creation, filled with the sound of cannon and the trampling of armies, the crash of great downfalls, and the turmoil of swift and violent revolutions; the world is thrown into the smelting pot and comes out in a new shape and with new features. They are periods when the wisdom of the wise is confounded and the prudence of the prudent turned into a laughing-stock....