Advice

Advice (also called exhortation) is a form of relating personal or institutional opinions, belief systems, values, recommendations or guidance about certain situations relayed in some context to another person, group or party often offered as a guide to action and/or conduct. Put a little more simply, an advice message is a recommendation about what might be thought, said, or otherwise done to address a problem, make a decision, or manage a situation.

Quotes

Arranged alphabetically by author.

• A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
  • Joseph Addison, The Spectator (1712).

• He can always pick out the Right Kind for the Other Fellow.
  • George Ade, "The Girl Who Took Notes and Got Wise and Then Fell Down".

• Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
  • Aesop, The Fox and the Goat (~500 B.C)

• Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

• What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.
  • Josh Billings, The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1842), under the heading "PUDDIN [sic] AND MILK."

• Who cannot give good counsel? 'tis cheap, it cost them nothing.
  • Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

• Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most, always like it the least.
  • Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, letter to his son, 29th January 1748.

• A woman's advice is not worth much, but he who does not heed it is a fool.
  • Pedro Calderon, El Medico de su Honra.
• Advice is more agreeable in the mouth than in the ear.
  • Mason Cooley (1927-2002), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Second Selection (1985).

• We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it!
  • Edsger W. Dijkstra, "The Humble Programmer", Communications of the ACM 15 (10), (October 1972): pp. 859–866.

• It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — always do what you are afraid to do.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series (1841).

• The first Degree of Folly, is to conceit one’s self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1744).

• Fools need Advice most, but wise Men only are the better for it.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758).

• We may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758).

• Advice is given freely because so much of it is worthless.
  • James Geary, American aphorist and journalist; quote from James Geary website, 2009.

• The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "The Path of Law" 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897).

• Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
  • Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.

• Tony Bushell had a friend in the Welsh Guards whose father had said to him on his twenty-first birthday: "Three pieces of invaluable advice for you, my boy: nevah hunt south of the Thames, nevah drink port after champagne and nevah have your wife in the morning lest something bettah should turn up during the day."
  • Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor, p. 177.

• Les vieillards aiment à donner de bons préceptes, pour se consoler de n'être plus en état de donner de mauvais exemples.
  • Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer provide bad examples.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678), Maxim 93.

• Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien, Gildor Inglorion to Frodo in, The Lord of the Rings, from The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, Chapter 3 (1954).

• It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
  • The Portrait Of Mr. W. H. (1889), p. 5.

• I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
  • Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895), Act I.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 10-11.

• The worst men often give the best advice.
  Our deeds are sometimes better than our thoughts.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Village Feast. Evening, line 917.

• Un fat quelquefois ouvre un avis important.
  • A fop sometimes gives important advice.
  • Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, L'Art Poétique, IV. 50.

• Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
  To think how mony counsels sweet,
  How mony lengthened, sage advices,
  The husband frae the wife despises.
  • Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1793), line 33.

• And may you better reck the rede,
  Than ever did th' adviser.
  • Robert Burns, Epistle to a Young Friend.

• She had a good opinion of advice,
  Like all who give and eke receive it gratis.
  For which small thanks are still the market price,
  Even where the article at highest rate is.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto XV, Stanza 29.

• Dicen, que el primer consejo
  Ha de ser de la muger.
  • They say that the best counsel is that of woman.
  • Calderon, El Médico de su Honra, I. 2.

• Let no man value at a little price
  A virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit
  Is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words.
  • George Chapman, The Gentleman Usher, Act IV, scene 1.

• 'Twas good advice, and meant,
  "My son, be good."
  • George Crabb, The Learned Boy, Volume V, Tale XXI.

• Know when to speake; for many times it brings
  Danger to give the best advice to kings.
  • Robert Herrick, Caution in Councell.

• Quidquid præcipies esto brevis.
  • Whatever advice you give, be short.
  • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), CCCXXXV.

• We give advice, but we do not inspire conduct.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 403.

• In rebus asperis et tenui spe fortissima quæque consilia tutissima sunt.
  • In great straits and when hope is small, the boldest counsels are the safest.
  • Livy, Annales, XXV. 38.

• No adventures mucho tu riqueza
  Por consejo de hombre que ha pobreza.
  • Hazard not your wealth on a poor man's advice.
  • Manuel, Conde Lucanor.

• Remember Lot's wife.
  • Luke, XVII. 32.

• C'est une importune garde, du secret des princes, à qui n'en à que faire.
  • The secret counsels of princes are a troublesome burden to such as have only to execute them.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, III. 1.

• Primo dede mulieris consilio, secundo noli.
  • Take the first advice of a woman and not the second.
  • Gilbertus Cognatus Noxeranus, Sylloge. See J. J. Grynæus, Adagio, p. 130. Langius, Polyanthea Col (1900) same sentiment. (Prends le premier conseil d'une femme et non le second. French for same).

• Consilia qui dant prava cautis hominibus,
  Et perdunt operam et deridentur turpiter.
  • Those who give bad advice to the prudent, both lose their pains and are laughed to scorn.
  • Phædrus, Fabulæ, I. 25.

• Be niggards of advice on no pretense;
  For the worst avarice is that of sense.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), line 578.

• In the multitude of counsellors there is safety.
  • Proverbs, XI. 14; XXIV. 6.

• Vom sichern Port lässt sich's gemächlich rathen.
  • One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, I. 1. 146.

• Bosom up my counsel,
  You'll find it wholesome.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (1613), Act I, scene 1, line 112.

• When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 76.

• Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice
  Hath often still'd my brawling discontent.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act IV, scene 1, line 8.

• I pray thee cease thy counsel,
  Which falls into mine ears as profitless
  As water in a sieve.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act V, scene 1, line 3.

• Direct not him, whose way himself will choose;
  'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act II, scene 1, line 29.

• No enemy is worse than bad advice.
  • Sophocles, Electra.

• Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it.
  • Syrus, Maxim 152.

• Che spesso avvien che ne' maggior perigli
  Son più audaci gli ottimi consigli.
  • For when last need to desperation driveth,
    Who dareth most he wisest counsel giveth.
  • Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme, VI. 6.

• A dead father's counsel, a wise son heedeth.
  • Esais Tegnèr, Fridthjof's Saga, Canto VIII.

• Facile omnes, quum valemus, recta consilia ægrotis damus.
  • We all, when we are well, give good advice to the sick.
  • Terence, Andria, II. 1. 9.