Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Saroyan, William

Best Quotes about Wisdom

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything

Proverb, African

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

Buddha

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 makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.

Goldsmith, Oliver

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

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

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

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

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

Marx, Eleanor

10.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

11.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Cullen Hightower

17.

In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.

Azai, Rabbi Ben

18.

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

Blake, William

19.

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.

Robbie Gass

20.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

Maeterlinck, Maurice

21.

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

Zenrin

22.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

23.

Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning.

Evans, Bergen

24.

Who is wise? One who learns from all.

Talmud, The

25.

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

Basho, Matsuo

26.

The end result of wisdom is... good deeds.

Talmud, The

27.

Wise men still seek Him today.

Bell, Dan

28.

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

Saroyan, William

29.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

30.

The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

Borland, Hal

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

34.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Levenson, Samuel

37.

If I don't have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.

Buscaglia, Leo

38.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

39.

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

40.

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

Ward, William A.

41.

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

Fitzhenry, R. I.

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

46.

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

47.

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

Titus Maccius Plautus

48.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

49.

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

50.

Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.