Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

Not by age but by capacity is wisdom acquired.

- Titus Maccius Plautus

Best Quotes about Wisdom

A wise man thinks what is easy is difficult.

Collins, John Churton

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.

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. [Proverbs 3:13-15]

Bible

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Lee, Robert E.

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

Bible

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

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

Bouton, E. S.

It is great folly to wish to be wise all alone.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

10.

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times.

Bible

11.

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocence, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

Bacon, Francis

12.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

14.

Some men are wise, and some are otherwise.

Smollett, Tobias G.

15.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

16.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance.

18.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

19.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Franklin, Benjamin

24.

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

Talmud, The

25.

The only one who is wiser than anyone is everyone.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Saroyan, William

27.

Through wisdom is a house built; and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge shall every room be filled with precious and pleasant riches.

Bible

28.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

29.

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

Cato The Elder

30.

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

Socrates

31.

There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.

Luther, Martin

32.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

36.

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

37.

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

Buscaglia, Leo

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

44.

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

Ziggy

45.

A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main enjoyment is winning.

Noll, Chuck

46.

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

Proverb, Chinese

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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.

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

50.

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue.

Proverb, German