A Quote by Hesiod
That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.
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Far best is he who is himself all-wise, and he, too, good who listens to wise words; But whoso is not wise or lays to hear another's wisdom is a useless man.
Much has been said of the loneliness of wisdom, and how much the Truth seeker becomes a pilgrim wandering from star to star. To the ignorant, the wise man is lonely because he abides in distant heights of the mind. But the wise man himself does not feel lonely. Wisdom brings him nearer to life; closer to the heart of the world than the foolish man can ever be. Bookishness may lead to loneliness, and scholarship may end in a battle of beliefs, but the wise man gazing off into space sees not an emptiness, but a space full of life, truth, and law.
No man is so foolish but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise, but may easily err, if he will take no others counsel but his own. But very few men are wise by their own counsel; or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.
Who then is free? the wise man who is lord over himself;
Whom neither poverty nor death, nor chains alarm; strong to withstand his passions and despise honors, and who is completely finished and rounded off in himself.
Whoever is wise is apt to suspect and be diffident of himself, and upon that account is willing to "hearken unto counsel"; whereas the foolish man, being in proportion to his folly full of himself, and swallowed up in conceit, will seldom take any counsel but his own, and for that very reason, because it is his own.
A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.
Wisdom is not mathematical, nor astronomical, nor zoological; when it talks too much of any one thing it ceases to be itself. There are wise physicists, but wisdom is not physical; there are wise physicians, but wisdom is not medical.
A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed,
nor attempts to govern others.
No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own: [I hate a sage who is not wise for himself]
The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.
What the essential difference between man and woman is, that they should be thus attracted to one another, no one has satisfactorily answered. Perhaps we must acknowledge the justness of the distinction which assigns to man the sphere of wisdom, and to woman that of love, though neither belongs exclusively to either. Man is continually saying to woman, Why will you not be more wise? Woman is continually saying to man, Why will you not be more loving? It is not in their wills to be wise or to be loving; but, unless each is both wise and loving, there can be neither wisdom nor love.
Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want.
Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.
I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.
The best man of all is he who knows everything himself. Good also the man who accepts another's sound advice; but the man who neither knows himself nor takes to hear what another says, he is no good at all.
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