Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

- Quarles, Francis

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

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

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

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

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

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

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Thurber, James

10.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

11.

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

12.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

13.

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

Cocteau, Jean

14.

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

15.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

19.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

20.

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

21.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

22.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

23.

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Luther, Martin

24.

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

Buddha

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Twain, Mark

28.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

29.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

30.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

31.

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

Cheever, John

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Ziggy

35.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

36.

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

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Zenrin

39.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

40.

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

41.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

42.

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

Evangel

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.

Proverb, Camerounian

47.

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

48.

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

Kraus, Karl

49.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

50.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

Galbraith, John Kenneth