Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

- Chaucer, Geoffrey

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

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

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

Bible

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

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.

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

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

Noll, Chuck

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

Bible

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.

10.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

11.

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

Quintilian

12.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

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

Young, Andrew

14.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

15.

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

Ward, William A.

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Larson, Doug

18.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

19.

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

20.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

21.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

22.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

23.

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

Robbie Gass

24.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

25.

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

Proverb, Spanish

26.

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

27.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

28.

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

Talmud, The

29.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

30.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

31.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

32.

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

Buddha

33.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

34.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

35.

The wisdom of others remains dull till it is writ over with our own blood. We are essentially apart from the world; it bursts into our consciousness only when it sinks its teeth and nails into us.

Hoffer, Eric

36.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

38.

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

39.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

41.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

42.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

Thurber, James

43.

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

44.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

45.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .

47.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

48.

A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

49.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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