Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

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

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

Garbutt, Frank

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

Saroyan, William

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

Marilyn vos Savant

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

10.

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.

11.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

12.

Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.

Ziggy

13.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

14.

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

15.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

16.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

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

Talmud, The

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

21.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

23.

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

24.

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

Larson, Doug

25.

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

Proverb, Spanish

26.

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

27.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

Proverb, Turkish

29.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

30.

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.

31.

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

Zenrin

32.

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

James Boswell

33.

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

34.

Handey, Jack

35.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

36.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

37.

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.

38.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Levenson, Samuel

41.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

42.

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

43.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

44.

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

Buddha

45.

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

Cato The Elder

46.

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

Cheever, John

47.

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

48.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

49.

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

50.

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