Behold, my son, with what little wisdom the world is ruled.

He alone is wise who can accommodate himself to all contingencies of life; but the fool contends, and struggling, like a swimmer, against the stream.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

Perhaps we are wiser, less foolish and more far-seeing than we were two hundred years ago. But we are still imperfect in all these things, and since the turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor virtue have increased as rapidly as the need for both.

Everyone is wise until he speaks.

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting,

A wise man is he who does not grieve for the thing which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes. Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings-- they are so trite, so threadbare. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot be far wrong. Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through fire.

He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so.