Wisdom

• You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand
• A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities. 
• A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. 
•  A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether. 
• Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. 
• Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. 
• I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. 
• Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.
• The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct. 
• We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. 
• All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. 
• Within each day, we have this choice: we can build walls, block ourselves from the light, and suffer a dampness in the soul. Or we can live barely, shine on through, and suffer the nicks of erosion for living in the open.
• It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see. 
• It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.
• It's so funny that people specify that year because in a way it was the biggest battle for me health wise.
• God saw fit, for wise reasons to allow the people of Israel thus to make and possess slaves; but is this any license to us to enslave any of our fellow-men, to kill any of our fellow-men whom we please and are able to destroy, and take possession of their estates?
• A wise man looks upon men as he does on horses; all their comparisons of title, wealth, and place, he consider but as harness. 
• I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress. 
• Some of the wise boys who say my music is loud, blatant and that's all should see the faces of the kids who have driven a hundred miles through the snow to see the band... to stand in front of the bandstand in an ecstasy all their own.