Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

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

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

Cocteau, Jean

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

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

Buddha

10.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

11.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Bible

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

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

James Boswell

18.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

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

Proverb, Spanish

21.

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

22.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

23.

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Brecht, Bertolt

29.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

30.

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

31.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

32.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

33.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.

Bible

40.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

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

42.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

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

44.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

45.

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

Zenrin

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

Cato The Elder

49.

Wisdom is perishable. Unlike information or knowledge, it cannot be stored in a computer or recorded in a book. It expires with each passing generation.

Taylor, Sid

50.

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