Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he’s there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can’t. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.

the only difference between a wise man and a fool was in the magnitude of his mistakes. To err was human, and the smarter and more powerful you were, the greater the scope of your screwup.

A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.

The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

Why then should witless man so much misweene
That nothing is but that which he hath seene?

The only real difference between a wise man and a fool, Moore knew, was that the wise man tended to make more serious mistakes — and only because no one trusted a fool with really crucial decisions; only the wise had the opportunity to lose battles, or nations.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man is not quite so stupid as he seems. The difference in our estimates of men lies in the fact that one individual is able to get his goods into the show-window, and the other is not aware that he has any show-window or any goods.

A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.

a man only knows what he's experienced

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom.

Wise Men learn by other's harms; Fools by their own.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can