Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

- Phaedrus

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Zenrin

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

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

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

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

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

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

10.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

11.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

Watson, Thomas J.

12.

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

13.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

14.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

15.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

16.

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

17.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

19.

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

James Boswell

20.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Evangel

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Blake, William

27.

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

Pindar

28.

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

29.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

30.

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

31.

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.

Cullen Hightower

32.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

33.

By the time your life is finished, you will have learned just enough to begin it well.

Marx, Eleanor

34.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

35.

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

36.

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

Bible

37.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates

38.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

39.

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

Ward, William A.

40.

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

Buddha

41.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

42.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

43.

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

44.

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

Levenson, Samuel

45.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

46.

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

47.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

48.

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

Cocteau, Jean

49.

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

Saroyan, William

50.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.