Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

- Santayana, George

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Thurber, James

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

Watson, Thomas J.

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

Saroyan, William

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German

It's the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

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

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

Cocteau, Jean

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Francis of Assisi, St.

10.

The wise man says it cannot be done, but the fool goes and does it.

11.

The price of wisdom is eternal thought.

Birch, Frank

12.

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

Cheever, John

13.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

14.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

Quintilian

15.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

16.

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

Twain, Mark

17.

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

18.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

19.

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

Talmud, The

20.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Russell, Bertrand

21.

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

Proverb, Spanish

22.

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

Elizabeth, Queen

23.

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

Marx, Eleanor

24.

Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.

Proverb, Chinese

25.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

26.

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

Young, Andrew

27.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.

Cato The Elder

28.

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

Confucius

29.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

30.

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

31.

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

Proverb, Camerounian

32.

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

33.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

34.

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

35.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

36.

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

37.

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

38.

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

Cullen Hightower

39.

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

40.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

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

Gabirol, Ibn

43.

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

Buddha

44.

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

45.

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

Kraus, Karl

46.

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

Butler, Samuel

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.