Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

- Quinault, Philippe

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Ward, William A.

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

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

Brecht, Bertolt

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.

Clemenceau, Georges

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

Confucius

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

Socrates

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

10.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

11.

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

Cheever, John

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

18.

Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.

Talmud, The

19.

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.

20.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

21.

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

Mencken, H. L.

22.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

23.

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

24.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

25.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

Butler, Samuel

26.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

27.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

28.

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

Buddha

29.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Basho, Matsuo

30.

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

Bible

31.

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

Ziggy

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Aristophanes

35.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

36.

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

Elizabeth, Queen

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

41.

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

42.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

43.

The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.

Aurelius, Marcus

44.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

46.

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

47.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

48.

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

49.

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

Zenrin

50.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis