Skip to content

Edward Young on Wisdom

1683–1765 England

← All quotes by Edward Young

11 quotes

Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.

Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.

Be wise with speed;
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Love of Fame (1725)

To climb life's worn, heavy wheel
Which draws up nothing new.

Teach me my days to number, and apply
My trembling heart to wisdom.

Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines,
And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive,
What is she, but the means of happiness?
That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool.

We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile—
The mind turns fool, before the cheek is dry.

But wisdom, awful wisdom! which inspects,
Discerns, compares, weighs, separates, infers,
Seizes the right, and holds it to the last.

The man of wisdom is the man of years.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

Night-Thoughts (1742)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Young (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.