Don't overestimate your emotions and underestimate your intelligence.

Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified.

He was stupid, yes, in the particular way that very clever people can be stupid.

No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.

Can you be sure that others have not come before you and destroyed the pristine state of the native myth? Can you be sure that the natives are not humoring you or pulling your leg? Bronislaw Malinowski thought he had discovered a people in the Trobriant Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. When asked how children were conceived, they supplied him with an elaborate mythic structure prominently featuring celestial intervention. Amazed, Malinowski objected that was not how it was done at all, and supplied them instead with the version so popular in the West today – including a nine-month gestation period. "Impossible," replied the Melanesians. "Do you not see that woman over there with her six-month-old child? Her husband has been on an extended voyage to another island for two years." Is it more likely that the Melanesians were ignorant of the begetting of children or that they were gently chiding Malinowski? If some peculiar-looking stranger came into my town and asked ME where babies came from, I'd certainly be tempted to tell him about storks and cabbages. Prescientific people are people. Individually they are as clever as we are.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

A wise bird does not lend even the smallest of its feathers to a hunter.

A cat may have nine lives, but a wise person has a hundred.

A small idea with wings will take you higher than a big one with legs.

Kindness is true wisdom— not cleverness.

Cleverness is a wall between honesty and dishonesty; it is not apparent to which side the wall belongs.

When cleverness emerges There is great hypocrisy.

Cleverness is not wisdom.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Here's a good rule of thumb: Too clever is dumb.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.

It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize, And to be swift is less than to be wise.

The bold are helpless without cleverness.

Sharp men, like sharp needles, break easy, though they pierce quick.