Great Throughts Treasury

"The best advice I can give to any young man or young woman upon graduation from school can be summed up in exactly eight words, and they are - be honest with yourself and tell the truth." - James A. Farley

"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, an scarcely in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct. Remember this; they that will not be counseled cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you over your knuckles." - Benjamin Franklin

"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice." - E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

"I lay very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty; but, after all, he must determine his course of action for himself." -

"Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least." -

"He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it." - Karl Ludwig von Knebel

"It would truly be a fine thing if men suffered themselves to be guided by reason, that they should acquiesce in the true remonstrances addressed to them by the writings of the learned and the advice of friends. But the greater part are so disposed that the words which enter by one ear do incontinently go out of the other, and begin again by following the custom. The best teacher one can have is necessity." - François de La Noüe

"Every man, however wise, needs the advice of some sagacious friend in the affairs of life." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it." - Publius Syrus

"Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves." -

"Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"Generosity gives assistance, rather than advice." -

"When someone asks you for advice, don’t give an immediate reply. Think over your response for at least five minutes. Before you speak to someone, think first about your goals. Think of how you will say something before you say it." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there." - David Zucker

"It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted." - Kenneth Eldon Bailey

"The thing to do when you're impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. It is always on our left, as at arms length. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you have the feeling that your companion is there watching you. How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us? Death is the only wise advise that we have. When we feel that everything is gong wrong, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong. That nothing really matters outside its touch. Ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them... It doesn't matter what the decision is. Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else. In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions. There are only decisions we make in the face of our inevitable death." -

"No vice is so bad as advice." - Marie Dressler

"I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about." - Henry Ford

"Experience keeps a dear school; but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct." - Benjamin Franklin

"To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Facts are worthless to a man if he has to keep running to somebody else for advice on how to use them." - Sven Halla

"The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer in a position to give bad examples." -

"We give advice, but we do not inspire conduct." -

"We give nothing so freely as advice." -

"No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another’s expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects." - Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

"The best advice on the art of being happy is about as easy to follow as advice to be well when one is sick." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

"The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book into the student." - Robert Aris Willmott

"Beware of unsolicited advice." -

"All propaganda messages tend to occur in three stages: the stage of drawing attention and arousing interest, the stage of emotional stimulation, and the stage of showing how tension thus created can be relieved (i.e., by accepting the speaker’s advice)." - J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown

"Advice is generally judged by results, not by intentions." -

"To give and receive advice – the former with freedom and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation – is peculiarly appropriate to genuine friendship." -

"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it." - Gordon Rupert Dickson

"Those who can take advice are sometimes superior to those who can give it." - Jack Klugman

"Bread is the best advice to the hungry." - Russian Proverbs

"The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not and never persist in trying to set people right." - Hannah Whitall Smith

"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite." -

"People who ask our advice almost never take it. Yet we should never refuse to give it, upon request, for it often helps us to see our own way more clearly." -

"We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice." - Jack Herbert or Arthur Helps

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." -

"I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not." - Peter Medawar, fully Sir Peter Brian Medawar

"The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It's still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them." -

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties." - Aesop NULL

"Distrust interested advice." - Aesop NULL

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties." -

"Distrust interested advice." -

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties." -

"Distrust interested advice." -

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.’" -

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.’" -