Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

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

Cheever, John

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Marden, Orison Swett

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

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

Buddha

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

10.

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

11.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

12.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

13.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

14.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

15.

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

Talmud, The

16.

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

James Boswell

17.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

18.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

19.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

20.

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

21.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

22.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

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

Zenrin

24.

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.

Walt Whitman

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

28.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

29.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

30.

Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

31.

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

32.

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

Garbutt, Frank

33.

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.

34.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

35.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

36.

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

Proverb, Spanish

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

41.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

42.

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

Buddha

43.

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

Quintilian

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

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

48.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

49.

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

Buscaglia, Leo