“Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness…”

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness…" by Robert E. Howard?
Robert E. Howard photo
Robert E. Howard 145
American author 1906–1936

Related quotes

“I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 11
Context: How much of what we do is free will, and how much is programmed in our genes? Why is each people so narrow that it believes that it, and it alone, has all the answers?
In religion, is there but one road to salvation? Or are there many, all equally good, all going in the same general direction?
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.

Democritus photo

“Men have made an idol of luck as an excuse for their own thoughtlessness. Luck seldom measures swords with wisdom. Most things in life quick wit and sharp vision can set right.”

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

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

John Selden photo

“Wit and wisdom are born with a man.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Learning.
Table Talk (1689)

William Wordsworth photo

“But who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part III, No. 7 - Persecution of the Scottish Covenanters.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

“An epigram is the marriage of wit, and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

20,000 Quips and Quotes (1968)

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell photo

“[A proverb is] one man's wit, and all men's wisdom.”

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878) leading Whig and Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister on two occasions

Remark to James Mackintosh on October 6, 1830, reported in his posthumous memoir, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, Vol. 2 (1836), p. 472 http://books.google.com/books?id=wHM4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22one+man's+wit+and+all+men's+wisdom%22&pg=PA472#v=onepage
Variant: [A proverb is] the wisdom of many and the wit of one.

George Fox photo
Novalis photo

“Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3031. It is Wit to pick a Lock, and steal a Horse; but it is Wisdom to let it alone.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1735) : The cunning man steals a horse, the wise man lets him alone.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Related topics