“Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

Even knowing what Eliot is saying here, does not make me wise.
I think you can’t achieve wisdom consciously.
So, there seems to be a contradiction, because when someone is saying that he is wise,
he’s certainly not modest…

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decrease,
His tender heir mught bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

  William Shakespeare 1564-1616 -  Sonnets and  ’A lovers complaint’ 

Translation to modern English:

We want all beautiful creatures to reproduce themselves so

that beauty’s flower will not die out;

but as an old man dies in time,

he leaves a young heir to carry on his memory.

But you, concerned only with your own beautiful eyes,

feed the bright light of life with self-regarding fuel,

making beauty shallow by your preoccupation with your looks.

In this you are your own enemy, being cruel to yourself.

You, who are the world’s most beautiful ornament

and the chief messenger of spring,

are burying your gifts within yourself.

And, dear selfish one, because you decline to reproduce,

you are actually wasting that beauty.

Take pity on the world or else be the glutton

who devours, with the grave, what belongs to the world.

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

William Blake 1757-1827

Songs of Experience (1794)  ‘The Sick Rose’