John Dryden Quotes

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

I'll trade glib for common sense any day.

Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgment.

The one thing I cannot support in a woman is stupidity.

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

Wise is what you want to be. Smart is easy compared to wise.

But I give you my word, in the entire book there is nothing that cannot be said aloud in mixed company. And there is, also, nothing that makes you a bit the wiser. I wonder--oh, what will you think of me--if those two statements do not verge upon the synonymous.

He that has more Knowledge than Judgment, is made for another Man's use more than his own.

It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.

Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.

He that never thinks can never be wise.

Careful amidst the careless, amongst the sleeping wide-awake, the intelligent man leaves them all behind, like a race-horse does a mere hack.

You know, ogres only sound stupid. Most are pretty smart." "And it's a shallow person who judges anyone by the way they sound. I'm so shallow I'm surprised I don't reflect myself.

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.

One can have knowledge without having wisdom, but one cannot have wisdom without having knowledge.

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

I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.

Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small.

A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.

Knowing many things doesn't teach insight.