Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Santayana, George

He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God.

Epictetus

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

Talmud, The

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

Saroyan, William

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

10.

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

11.

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

Ward, William A.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Talmud, The

15.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

16.

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

Maeterlinck, Maurice

17.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

Cocteau, Jean

19.

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

20.

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

21.

The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

22.

The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. [Proverbs 15: 31]

Bible

23.

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

Thurber, James

24.

The greatest event for the world is the arrival of a new and wise person.

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

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

Evangel

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

29.

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

30.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books.

Proverb, Chinese

31.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

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

33.

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

Cheever, John

34.

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

Galbraith, John Kenneth

35.

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

Buddha

36.

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

Levenson, Samuel

37.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

41.

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

Bouton, E. S.

42.

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

43.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

44.

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

Aristophanes

45.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

Billings, Josh

46.

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

47.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

48.

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

49.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

50.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin