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I am suspected in the second sentence. I think it should be ( cannot follow your advice... ) so that the meaning becomes the same... The following two sentences I found in one grammar book:

The old man is too wise not to follow your advice.

Remove too and keep on meaning

The old man is so wise that he can follow your advice easily.

I think it should be ( cannot follow your advice easily) ?

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    The original sentence means that not following that advice would be unwise, but the old man is wise and will follow it. Whether it's easy or not has nothing to do with it. The only sensible version including "So... that" would be The old man is so wise that he will follow your advice.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Oct 20, 2022 at 16:41
  • The two versions don't mean the same thing: why are you changing the sentence? "too wise not to" implies a lesser amount of wisdom than "so wise that": the latter implies the old man is very wise, the former implies he's not stupid.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Oct 20, 2022 at 21:43

2 Answers 2

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The sentence should be--

The old man is too foolish/unwise to follow your advice.➜ The old man is so foolish/unwise that he cannot follow your advice.

[ I am too tired to speak. ➜ I am so tired that I cannot speak.

The man was too old to walk. ➜ The man is so weak that he cannot walk. ]

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  • Your first example is incorrect. Changing wise to foolish changes the meaning of the sentence. There is no double negative so you cannot change wise to foolish and preserve the original meaning. As the sentence was originally written it means, The old man is so wise that he is aware that not following your advice is a bad idea. In other words He is too wise to ignore your advice.
    – EllieK
    Commented Oct 20, 2022 at 18:07
  • @ Mohammad Farukh Ahmad I agree with you . I said form the beginning I am suspected with the author's sentence. He is Indian 2. As much as I searched, I never found similar example in any grammar book else. I just found two results one of which is from the book The Lion of Flanders " good days in had oftener than their shuttles; but I hope that our masters will be too wise on this occasion " By the way, the first sentence is not wrong. I just think the second one needs editing so that meaning goes equal
    – Ahmad Mohammad
    Commented Oct 20, 2022 at 20:00
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Grammatically both sentences are correct but confusing with meaning and hardly to be translated correctly.

Rule

If the sentence containing too…to is in the affirmative, the sentence containing so…that will be in the negative.

But for translation it hardly can be translated correctly. It is still vague in how much we try and change. It is similar to ( The news is too good to be true \ The news is so good that cannot be true. It is likely joking with language or mokering.

There is similar to this language in our culture called ( asteism) i.e a type of irony

too = adverb ( very )

  1. The old man is too wise not to follow your advice. = the man is wise enough not to follow ...... ( He is a bit cautious until he is sure of the advice ( So how he takes with advice ) ? Perhaps he will go with that someone's advice when he is sure enough.
  2. The old man is so wise that he can \ will follow your advice easily.
    it carries the same meaning ( he will accept the advice when he becomes sure of it)

Conclusion ( Not good sentences \ confusing )

My suggestion:

I suggest changing both sentences as :

  1. The old man is too wise to follow your advice. ( positive ) = His wisdom helps him to distinguish which advice to follow ( either yes or no) i.e. according to the context, apparently he does not follow the advice.

  2. The old man is so wise that he cannot follow your advice easily. = both logically and grammatically correct and the meaning is the same.

Finished

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  • You have not addressed the word not in the original sentence. The old man is too wise not to follow your advice.
    – EllieK
    Commented Nov 1, 2022 at 12:49
  • There is difference with meaning : Once you say " The old man is too wise not to follow your advice" = really suggested the old man followed the advice whatever the advice is\ was >> The old man is too wise to follow your advice = really he didn't follow your advice ( He knew it is worth nothing to follow ), so for this reason I suggested changing both sentences to be logically acceptable. Please read it well again.
    – Ahmad Mohammad
    Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 14:46

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