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Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself.

— William Shakespeare

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Wisdom

More quotes by William Shakespeare

Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

I am a man,
More sinn'd against than sinning.

King Lear (1605)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It (1599)

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Hamlet (1600)

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry IV, Part 2 (1597)

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

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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)

Be wise;
Soar not too high, to fall; but stoop to rise.

Philip Massinger Duke of Milan (1623)

Attribution

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