“It is wiser to abstain than to repent.”

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 616.

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: A long time ago my father told me what his father told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water, who dreamed what was to be; and this was long before the coming of the Wasichus. He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider's web all around the Lakotas. And he said: "When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve." They say he went back to Mother Earth soon after he saw this vision, and it was sorrow that killed him. You can look about you now and see that he meant these dirt-roofed houses we are living in, and that all the rest was true. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.

Source: Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

Of Seeming Wise
Essays (1625)

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 44
Source: Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Filburn v. People's Palace and Aquarium Co. (1890), L. R. 25 Q. B. 261.

Source: The Letters of Machiavelli

Source: The Richest Man in Babylon