Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

- Plautus, Titus Maccius

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Thurber, James

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Coolidge, Calvin

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

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

Kraus, Karl

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

Buddha

10.

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

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

Boileau, Nicholas

13.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

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

15.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

16.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

17.

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

Ziggy

18.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

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.

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

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

28.

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

29.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

30.

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

Garbutt, Frank

31.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

32.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

33.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

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

35.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

36.

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

37.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

38.

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

Bible

39.

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Marden, Orison Swett

40.

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

41.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

42.

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

43.

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

Mencken, H. L.

44.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Colton, Charles Caleb

45.

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

46.

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

Larson, Doug

47.

Timing, degree and conviction are the three wise men in this life.

Fitzhenry, R. I.

48.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

49.

The wisest have the most authority.