Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise.

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) was a prominent English devotional poet and moralist whose writings, steeped in Protestant piety, were widely read in the seventeenth century. His work often contrasts spiritual prudence with the corrupting temptations of “the world,” echoing biblical language about worldly wisdom versus godly wisdom. The aphoristic form of this line fits Quarles’s habit of compressing moral counsel into memorable antitheses intended for meditation and practical conduct. While the sentiment is characteristic of Quarles’s religious-ethical outlook, I cannot confidently place this exact wording in a specific dated poem, emblem, or prose work without verification.

The line turns on a paradox: it commends being “worldly” in the sense of prudent, realistic, and competent in everyday affairs, while warning against being “worldly wise,” i.e., clever in a way that is morally compromised, cynical, or oriented toward self-interest at the expense of conscience. Quarles’s chiasmic phrasing distinguishes practical wisdom from the kind of shrewdness that treats virtue as naïveté. The maxim thus urges a balance: engage responsibly with temporal life—work, money, reputation, politics—yet keep one’s ultimate standards anchored in spiritual integrity rather than in the expediencies of the age.