Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

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

Proverb, Turkish

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

Proverb, Chinese

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

Buddha

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

Aristophanes

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

Cheever, John

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

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

Quintilian

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

Elizabeth, Queen

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

Robbie Gass

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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

Bible

18.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

19.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

20.

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

21.

There is a time when a man distinguishes the idea of felicity from the idea of wealth; it is the beginning of wisdom.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

25.

Wisdom outweighs any wealth.

Sophocles

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

31.

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all your getting get understanding.

Bible

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.

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

34.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

35.

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

Oprah Winfrey

36.

Wisdom is not attained by years, but by ability.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

37.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

39.

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.

40.

Wisdom alone is the science of others sciences.

Plato

41.

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.

42.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

43.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Phaedrus

44.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

45.

True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Bouton, E. S.

46.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

47.

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

James Boswell

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De