“Since it most profits that the truly wise
Should seem not wise at all.”
Source: Prometheus Bound, line 385 (tr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
“2168. 'Tis better for thee to be wise and not seem so, than to seem wise and not be so: Yet Men, for the most Part, desire and endeavor the contrary.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)
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Thomas Fuller (writer)420
British physician, preacher, and intellectual 1654–1734Related quotes
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
En toutes compagnies il y a plus de folz que de sages, et la plus grande partie surmonte tousjours la meilleure. <br class="br"> Chapter 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=wfRKAQAAIAAJ&q=%22En+toutes+compagnies+il+y+a+plus+de+folz+que+de+sages+et+la+plus+grande+partie+surmonte+tousjours+la+meilleure%22&pg=PA285#v=onepage. <br class="br">Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Pantagruel (1532)
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Sancho to Don Quixote, in Ch. 9, Peter Anthony Motteux translation (1701).
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III
Context: To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. 'Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. And though I am but a clown, or a bumpkin, as you may say, yet I would have you to know I know what is what, and have always taken care of the main chance...
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.”
Cato the Elder (-234–-149 BC) politician, writer and economist (0234-0149)
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 title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied.”
Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?
“Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
“For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.”
Against Colotes
Moralia, Others
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IX, The Future Of Liberalism, p. 118.