Motivational Quotes

Wisdom

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

- Aristophanes

Best Quotes about Wisdom

Wisdom overcomes fortune.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

James, William

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

James Boswell

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

Ziggy

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

Basho, Matsuo

The wisdom of a learned man comet by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. [Ecclesiasticus 38:25]

Bible

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

Gabirol, Ibn

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

10.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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.

12.

A nation's treasure is its scholars.

Proverb, Yiddish

13.

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

Proverb, Chinese

14.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Confucius

15.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

16.

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

17.

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

Socrates

18.

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

Zenrin

19.

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

20.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

21.

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

Saroyan, William

22.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Bacon, Francis

23.

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

24.

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

Cocteau, Jean

25.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

26.

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

27.

Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.

Euripides

28.

Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.

Young, Andrew

29.

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

Azai, Rabbi Ben

30.

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

Butler, Samuel

31.

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

Evangel

32.

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.

33.

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Sophocles

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

Bible

36.

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

Epictetus

37.

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

38.

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

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

Buddha

40.

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

Bible

41.

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

Quintilian

42.

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Brecht, Bertolt

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Horace

46.

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

47.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

48.

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

Blake, William

49.

The live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, who have renounced every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart.

Bhagavad Gita

50.

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