“The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”
Experience
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.”
—
Ralph Waldo Emerson
,
book
Experience
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“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.”
Anatole France
(1844–1924) French writer
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.”
Nicolas Chamfort
(1741–1794) French writer
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
“Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.”
Samuel Johnson
(1709–1784) English writer
Piet Hein
(1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet
Lest Fools Should Fail
Grooks
Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 12 (p. 197).
Northrop Frye
(1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)
Context: Man is born lost in a forest. If he is obsessed by the thereness of the forest, he stays lost and goes in circles; if he assumes the forest is not there, he keeps bumping into trees. The wise man looks for the invisible line between the "is" and the "is not" which is the way through. The street in the city, the highway in the desert, the pathway of the planets through the labyrinth of the stars, are parallel forms. (1:111)
