Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually marked by an ill placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

Noll, Chuck

10.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

11.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

12.

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

Proverb, Chinese

13.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Blake, William

14.

The extreme limit of wisdom --that's what the public calls madness.

Cocteau, Jean

15.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

17.

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

Levenson, Samuel

18.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

19.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

20.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

21.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

22.

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

Handey, Jack

23.

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

Ward, William A.

24.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

Covey, Stephen R.

25.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

26.

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

Cullen Hightower

27.

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

28.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

29.

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

30.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Saroyan, William

34.

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

35.

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey

36.

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

Blake, William

37.

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

Hesse, Hermann

38.

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

39.

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

Talmud, The

40.

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

41.

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

42.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

43.

If you wish to know the road up the mountain, ask the man who goes back and forth on it.

Zenrin

44.

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Luther, Martin

45.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

46.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

47.

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

Larson, Doug

48.

Follow then the shining ones, the wise, the awakened, the loving, for they know how to work and forbear.