Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Proverb, Chinese

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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.

No man is wise enough by himself.

Titus Maccius Plautus

By others faults the wise correct their own.

Proverb

Kings may be judges of the earth, but wise men are the judges of kings.

Gabirol, Ibn

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

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 more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

11.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

12.

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

James Boswell

13.

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

14.

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.

15.

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

Zenrin

16.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

17.

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

Proverb, Spanish

18.

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

19.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Brecht, Bertolt

20.

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

21.

Inner wisdom is more important than wealth. The more you spend it, the more you gain.

Oprah Winfrey

22.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

23.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

24.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

25.

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

Kraus, Karl

26.

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

27.

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

Blake, William

28.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Quarles, Francis

29.

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

30.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

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

32.

We cannot advance without new experiments in living, but no wise man tries every day what he has proved wrong the day before.

Adams, James Truslow

33.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

34.

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

Buddha

35.

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

Cocteau, Jean

36.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

37.

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

38.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

39.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

40.

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

Twain, Mark

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 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 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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

47.

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

Mencken, H. L.

48.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.

Blake, William

49.

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

Proverb, Turkish

50.

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