The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do is style.
There is one thing that matters, to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve.
We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
Speech was given to the ordinary sort or men, whereby to communicate their mind; but to wise men, whereby to conceal it.
Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.