Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

When you move amidst the world of sense, free from attachment and aversion alike, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end, and you life in the wisdom of the Self.

- Bhagavad Gita

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd preferred to talk.

Larson, Doug

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Levenson, Samuel

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. [9:18b, Ecclesiastes]

Bible

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil -- not the strength to choose between the two.

Cheever, John

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

10.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

11.

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

12.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Coolidge, Calvin

13.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Blake, William

14.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

15.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.

16.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Bacon, Francis

17.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

18.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

19.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

Buddha

21.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Gibran, Kahlil

22.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

23.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

24.

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

25.

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

26.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

27.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

Twain, Mark

28.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

29.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

30.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

31.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Smiles, Samuel

33.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

34.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

35.

Many people might have attained wisdom had they not assumed they already had it.

36.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

37.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

Asimov, Isaac

38.

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

Marx, Eleanor

39.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

40.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Saroyan, William

41.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

42.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, --something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

Connolly, Cyril

43.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

Watson, Thomas J.

46.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

47.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

Great men are the commissioned guides of mankind, who rule their fellows because they are wiser.

Carlyle, Thomas

49.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

50.

The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. [Psalms 19:7]

Bible