“A wise man poor
Is like a sacred book that’s never read,—
To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.
This age thinks better of a gilded fool
Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.”

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

“The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

“There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.”

John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1648–1721) English poet and notable Tory politician of the late Stuart period

“The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

“True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.”

Akhenaten 18th dynasty pharaoh

“When you read the sacred Scriptures, or any other book, never think how you read, but what you read.”

John Philip Kemble (1757–1823) British actor-manager

“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray