Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know…
Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
Knowing things and living well are two different skills, and Spurgeon warns that the first can make us worse at the second. Someone who has gathered plenty of facts may start to feel finished, as though information were the same as understanding. His phrase "a knowing fool" describes a person who has the answers but misapplies them, or never applies them at all. Wisdom, for him, is knowledge put to its proper use.
This fits the biblical wisdom tradition that shaped Spurgeon, a Victorian Baptist preacher steeped in Proverbs. There, wisdom is practical and moral, a matter of how one walks through life, and it begins in humility rather than cleverness. Learning is good, but it needs a humble heart to direct it.
A modern example is the person who has read endless articles on sleep and screen habits, can explain them well, and still scrolls their phone until 2 a.m. The wise step is not another article. It is charging the phone across the room tonight and noticing how tomorrow feels. Wisdom shows up in small acts like that.