Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Kraus, Karl

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

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

Zenrin

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

10.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

11.

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

12.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

13.

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

Aurelius, Marcus

14.

Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

15.

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

Butler, Samuel

16.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

17.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

18.

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Basho, Matsuo

20.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

21.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

22.

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

Thurber, James

23.

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

24.

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

Noll, Chuck

25.

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

Bible

26.

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

Talmud, The

27.

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

Bible

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

30.

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

Bible

31.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

32.

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

Proverb, Chinese

33.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

34.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

35.

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

Larson, Doug

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Blake, William

39.

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.

40.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

41.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

42.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

48.

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

49.

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

50.

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