Lest Fools Should Fail
Grooks
The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm
“Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.”
“The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”
Experience
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
“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
“He was passionate and thought he was wise; I was a fool and suspected it; I was nearer to wisdom.”
Il était passionné et se croyait sage; j'étais folle, mais je m'en doutais, et, sous ce point de vue, j'étais plus près que lui de la Sagesse.
Maximes et Pensées, #562
Maxims and Considerations
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.”
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Context: Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.
