What Is A Wise Man?

What is a wise man? What is wisdom? What does it mean to act wisely? Being wise does not necessarily mean learning a lot of facts or getting a lot of knowledge from books. A wise man understands human nature, relationships among humans, and the complex situations in which humans become involved. Through his own experience and understanding he knows how humans are likely to act and react in a given set of circumstances, and so he makes his own decisions and controls his own acts so that they will have the best possible results, both for himself and for others. Thus a wise man is defined not by what he knows but by what he does.