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For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise,
And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow;
Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise;
Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow.

— Edmund Spenser

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Wisdom

More quotes by Edmund Spenser

For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.

Fowre Hymnes (1596)

The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd,
As by his manners.

The Faerie Queene (1589)

For all that faire is, is by nature good;
That is a signe to know the gentle blood.

Fowre Hymnes (1596)

I learned have, not to despise,
What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.

Complaints (1591)

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

The Faerie Queene (1589)

All Edmund Spenser quotes →

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'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

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It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Spenser (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.