“We are all fools sometimes, child, yet a wise woman learns to limit how often.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Lelaine Akashi to Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1994)
Source: The True Game, The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), Chapter 3 (p. 45)
“We are all fools sometimes, child, yet a wise woman learns to limit how often.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Lelaine Akashi to Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1994)
“Any damn fool can beg up some kind of job; it takes a wise man to make it without working.”
Charles Bukowski book Post Office
Source: Post Office (1971)
“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.”
Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt stulti eruditis videntur.
Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor
Book X, Chapter VII, 21
See also: An X among Ys, a Y among Xs
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
“It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.”
Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power
Source: The 48 Laws of Power
“Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.”
Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter
Source: Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
“If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”
Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians
1 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV)
First Epistle to the Corinthians
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone.”
John Steinbeck book East of Eden
East of Eden (1952)
Context: Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then — the glory — so that a cricket song sweetens the ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished…