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Quotes about wisdom

65 verified quotes from 38 writers, c. 475 BC to 1923.

Quotes 45 to 65 of 65, page 3 of 3.

Continued from page 1, which has our introduction. Still oldest first.

  1. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied

    John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861

    Our note: Mill arguing that some pleasures are worth more than others; the essay first ran in Fraser's Magazine.

    Verified in the full text of Utilitarianism on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #11224

    Painted the same decade: The Third-Class Carriage, Honoré Daumier, 1864

  2. …there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home.

    Alyosha Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880Translated by Constance Garnett (1912)

    Our note: Alyosha's parting words to the boys at the stone, after Ilusha's funeral.

    Verified in the full text of The Brothers Karamazov on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #28054

    Painted the same decade: La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930), Vincent van Gogh, 1889

  3. How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

    Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890

    Our note: Holmes to Watson, working out how an intruder got into a locked room.

    Verified in the full text of The Sign of the Four on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2097

    Painted the same decade: The Shepherd's Song, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1891

  4. Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die

    Rudyard Kipling, How Fear Came, 1895

    Our note: The opening of the Jungle's Law, a verse about keeping to the rules of the pack.

    Verified in the full text of How Fear Came on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1937 · Collected in The Second Jungle Book

    Painted the same decade: The Englishman (William Tom Warrener, 1861–1934) at the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892

  5. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason

    G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

    Our note: From the chapter 'The Maniac', on the danger of logic cut off from everything else.

    Verified in the full text of Orthodoxy on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #130

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