Cleverness

“Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, from the collection Culture and Value, translated by Peter Winch.

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
— Oscar Wilde

“Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.”
— Plato

“It is great cleverness to know when to conceal one’s cleverness”
— François de la Rochefoucauld

“I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
— Will Durant

“Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare” — George Bernard Shaw

“Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.”
— Frank Moore Colby

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
— Abraham J. Heschel

“The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.”
— Mary Pettibone Poole

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Piglet. “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has a Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has a Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“Really to know is to know also that you know, and know that those who know, know, and that those who don’t know, don’t know. In other words, your knowing is tested by your ability to distinguish between those who know and those who are only pretending, or deceiving themselves.”
– R. H. Blyth (via Whiskey River)