This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Much of the wisdom of one age is the folly of the next.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
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.
Advice | Better | Character | Defects | Giving | Little | Receive | Wisdom |
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Human wisdom is the aggregate of all human experience, constantly accumulating, selecting and reorganizing its own materials.
Experience | Wisdom |
Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.
Culture | Inheritance | Knowledge | Man | Self | Thinking | Wisdom | Work |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Wisdom is a fox who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate, the maggots are best. It is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go, you’ll find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.
The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living which are to be desired when dying.
Wisdom |
The Lord's Prayer is short and mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses: it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every petition, that by so excellent an authority we may know what is lawful to beg of God.
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.
Wisdom |