Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

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

Buscaglia, Leo

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

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

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

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, Chinese

12.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

13.

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

Buddha

14.

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

15.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

16.

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

Buddha

17.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

18.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

19.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

20.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

21.

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

Cheever, John

22.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

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

Talmud, The

24.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

28.

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

29.

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

James Boswell

30.

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

Larson, Doug

31.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

32.

Committing a great truth to memory is admirable; committing it to life is wisdom.

Ward, William A.

33.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

34.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

35.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

36.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

37.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

38.

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

39.

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

Bible

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

43.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

44.

Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.

Evangel

45.

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

Bible

46.

Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

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.

48.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

49.

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

50.

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