advice quotes

Abigail Van Buren: 

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.

Adlai Stevenson: 

We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to avoid giving counsel which we don't follow when it damages those who take us at our word.

Aeschylus: 

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

African proverb: 

It takes a village to raise a child.

Agatha Christie: 
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.
Albert Camus: 

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

Albert Schweitzer: 

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.

Alfonso the Wise (attributed): 

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. 
13th century


Anna Quindlen: 

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

Bessie Stanley (adapted; erroneously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson): 
Success 

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded. 
Often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is an adaptation of a poem published in 1905 by Bessie Stanley. No version of it has been found in Emerson's writings. For more information see http://www.transcendentalists.com/success.htm

Bill Cosby: 

A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice.

Carolyn Wells: 

Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.

Charles A. Beard: 

All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. 
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. 
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. 
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Erica Jong: 

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.

Francis Bacon, sr.: 

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

G. K. Chesterton: 

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

Georg C. Lichtenberg: 

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

George Burns: 

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

Gloria Steinem: 

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Gracián: 

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

Harry S Truman: 

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Heinrich Heine: 

He only profits from praise who values criticism.

Henri Nouwen: 

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Horace: 

Whatever advice you give, be brief.

James Callaghan: 

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.

Karl Barth: 

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Lillian Hellman: 

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Louisa May Alcott: 
When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole. 
in Little Women

Marcus Aurelius: 

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Margaret Fuller: 
Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
Mark Twain: 

Always do right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest. 
message to Young People's Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York, February 16, 1901


Nelson Algren: 

Never play cards with any man named "Doc."
Never eat at any place called "Mom's."
And never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

Oscar Wilde: 

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

Pamela Glenconner: 

Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.

Pete Seeger: 

"Do-so" is more important than "say-so."

Rabindranath Tagore: 

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 
Go put your creed into the deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously): 
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ramona L. Anderson: 

People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.

Robert Frost: 

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Samuel Smiles: 

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Thomas Fuller: 
If better were within, better would come out.
Thomas Jefferson: 

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life:
1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which never have happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
(letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825)

Thomas Jefferson: 

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.
to his daughter Martha


W. Somerset Maugham: 

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

Woody Guthrie: 

Take it easy -- but take it.