Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

- Elizabeth, Queen

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Brecht, Bertolt

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

Boileau, Nicholas

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

10.

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

Proverb, Chinese

11.

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

12.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

13.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

14.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

15.

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Rowland, Helen

16.

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

17.

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

Cheever, John

18.

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

19.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

20.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

21.

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

22.

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

Proverb, Turkish

23.

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

Bible

24.

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

25.

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

Buddha

26.

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

27.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

28.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

29.

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

30.

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

Kraus, Karl

31.

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

32.

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

Blake, William

33.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

34.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato The Elder

35.

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

36.

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

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.

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

39.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

40.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

41.

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

42.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.

Garbutt, Frank

45.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

46.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

47.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

48.

There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

Hoagland, Edward

49.

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

50.

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

Cocteau, Jean