Advice

• 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"

• There is no cramming for the test of life.
  • Madeleine Albright

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

• When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
  • Josh Billings

• When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
  • Erma Bombeck

• 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

• Advice is more agreeable in the mouth than in the ear.
  • Mason Cooley (1927-2002), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Second Selection (1985)

• Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
  • Gordon R. Dickson

• 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)

• 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

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

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

• He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.
  • Karl von Knebel

• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm 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.
  • Henri Nouwen

• 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.

• Take this advice: know when to stay and when to get out.
  • Swami Raj

• 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

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

• In giving advice seek to help, not to please, your friend.
  • Solon

• The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
  • Hannah Whitall Smith

• No one wants advice - only corroboration.
  • John Steinbeck

• 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, Bk. I, Ch. 3 (1954)

• 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 Act I. (1895)

Anonymous

• Advice is generally much better received when the advisor is entertaining.
  • Anonymous from http://advice.com

• Advice after injury is like medicine after death.
  • Danish proverb

• A woman's advice is a poor thing, but he is a fool who does not take it.
  • Spanish proverb

• Never give advice — a wise man won't need it, a fool won't heed it.

• Good advice is better than bad advice, if you know the difference.