Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

Best Quotes about Wisdom

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Socrates

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

Gabirol, Ibn

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

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

Buscaglia, Leo

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

Blake, William

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

Evans, Bergen

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

Thurber, James

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

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

10.

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

James Boswell

11.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

12.

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

Blake, William

13.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

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

Ward, William A.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Oprah Winfrey

18.

The wisest have the most authority.

Plato

19.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

20.

Wisdom is knowledge, rightly applied.

21.

It is not wise to be wiser than necessary.

Quinault, Philippe

22.

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

Basho, Matsuo

23.

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

Socrates

24.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

25.

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

26.

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd preferred to talk.

Larson, Doug

27.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

28.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Franklin, Benjamin

29.

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

Bible

30.

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

31.

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

Marilyn vos Savant

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Bible

35.

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

36.

Wise care keeps what it has gained.

Proverb, Danish

37.

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom.

Menander

38.

Action should culminate in wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

39.

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

40.

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

Bible

41.

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

Butler, Samuel

42.

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

43.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. [1 Corinthians 3:18-19]

Bible

44.

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.

45.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

46.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

47.

The beginning of wisdom is to desire it.

Gabirol, Ibn

48.

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