Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.

- Proverb, Turkish

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

Proverb, Chinese

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Carlyle, Thomas

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life -- in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Seneca

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

Freud, Sigmund

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

Bible

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

Twain, Mark

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

10.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]

Bible

11.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

12.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

Adams, James Truslow

13.

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

Saroyan, William

14.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

15.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom.

17.

The foolish sayings of a rich man pass for wise ones.

Proverb, Spanish

18.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

19.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

20.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

22.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

23.

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

24.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

26.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

27.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

28.

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

29.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

30.

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

31.

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

Larson, Doug

32.

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

Talmud, The

33.

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

Mencken, H. L.

34.

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

35.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

36.

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

37.

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God, or several signatures of that one archetypal seal, or like so many multiplied reflections of one and the same face, made in several glasses, whereof some are clearer, some obscurer, some standing nearer, some further off.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

41.

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

Cheever, John

42.

If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

Buscaglia, Leo

43.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

44.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

45.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Colton, Charles Caleb

46.

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible

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.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Cullen Hightower

50.

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

Carlyle, Thomas