Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation," she said. "Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed.

The least foolish is wise.

We could almost say that being willing to be a fool is one of the first wisdoms. So acknowledging foolishness is always a very important and powerful experience. The phenomenal world can be perceived and seen properly if we see it from the perspective of being a fool. There is very little distance between being a fool and being wise; they are extremely close. When we are really, truly fools, when we actually acknowledge our foolishness, then we are way ahead. We are not even in the process of becoming wise — we are already wise.

The disadvantage of becoming wise is that you realize how foolish you've been.

Yes, God uses the uneducated to confound the wise. But that doesn't make ignorance a virtue.

Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool.

He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.

And he is oft the wisest manWho is not wise at all.

The errors of a wise man are literally more instructive than the truths of a fool. The wise man travels in lofty, far-seeing regions; the fool in low-lying, high-fenced lanes; retracing the footsteps of the former, to discover where he diviated, whole provinces of the universe are laid open to us; in the path of the latter, granting even that he has not deviated at all, little is laid open to us but two wheel-ruts and two hedges.

Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools.

A wise man heedeth all things, and in his own eyes is a fool.

A foolish man thinks he knows everything. A wise man knows he doesn't.

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.

There's little comfort in the wise

Even if a fool lived with a wise man all his life, he would still not recognise the truth, like a wooden spoon cannot recognise the flavour of the soup.

Nobody likes to see a stupid guy wise up.

The wise person finds enemies more useful than the fool does friends .

You can't be wise without being intelligent, but you certainly can be intelligent without being wise.

Though through all his life a fool associates with a wise man, he yet understands not the Dharma, as the spoon, the flavor of soup.

Each and every part of the world is a snare for the fool and a means of deliverance for the wise.

I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.

Wise men are not wise at all times.

A foolish man thinks he knows everything. A wise man knows he doesn't," Finn replied absently, still looking down at the book. "That's such a fortune-cookie answer," I said with a laugh, and even he smirked at me.