Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

- Birch, Frank

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

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

Proverb, Chinese

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

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

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]

Bible

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

10.

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

11.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

12.

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

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.

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

Ward, William A.

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Young, Andrew

18.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

20.

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

21.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

22.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

23.

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

Marx, Eleanor

24.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

25.

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

26.

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

Cheever, John

27.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

28.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

29.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates

30.

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

Saroyan, William

31.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

32.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

33.

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Kraus, Karl

34.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

35.

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

Talmud, The

36.

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

37.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

38.

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

39.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

40.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice

41.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

42.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

43.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

44.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

45.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

46.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

47.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

James Boswell

48.

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

49.

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

Bible

50.

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